Call For Japanese Sailors To Be Recovered
Sun Herald
Sunday December 4, 2005
THE bodies of two Japanese sailors that could still be inside the midget submarine apparently discovered in Broken Bay should be recovered and sent back to Japan, their wartime colleague said last week.
The Japanese wartime pilot who flew over Sydney Harbour on May 30, 1942, to spot targets for the midget submarines said the remains of the last two crewmen should be allowed to complete their journey home.Susumo Ito, 91, said from Japan he was very excited that the submarine that attacked Sydney Harbour may have been found after 63 years. Filmmaker Damien Lay disclosed on a live TV broadcast last week that he had found a metal object the same shape and size as missing midget submarine M24 lying under sand near Lion Island in Broken Bay.He put forward evidence that M24 went north to Broken Bay after its attack on Sydney Harbour on May 31, 1942, during which it sank HMAS Kuttabul killing 21 sailors.Two other midget submarines were captured that night and the crew killed themselves. They were cremated and their ashes returned to Japan. The crew of the M24, Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban, 24, and Petty Officer Mamoru Ashibe, 25, were never found. "I hope their remains could be returned to their families and they can have a proper funeral," Mr Ito said."I am so grateful to Australia they gave the other four crewmen honourable funerals even though it was wartime, and I am thankful there may be now a proper funeral for the men of the third submarine."Mr Ito said he would like the submarine raised to the surface to see if their remains were inside.Lay said Itsuo Ashibe, the brother of the missing crewman Mamoru Ashibe, had told him he wanted something from his brother returned, even if it was just a shoe or a piece of the submarine. "Itsuo Ashibe is longing for closure and the family would be grateful just to see something to remember his brother by."Planning Minister Frank Sartor has ordered the NSW Heritage Office to carry out detailed investigations to determine whether the M24 is under the sand 20 metres deep off Lion Island.Sophisticated equipment can get more details of the object without removing the sand, but Lay said the only way to prove it was the M24 was to clear away the sand.A spokesman for Mr Sartor said if the family of the crewmen would like the remains returned then that was most likely what would happen. Lay said it would solve the final mystery of what happened to M24.War records show soldiers guarding the Hawkesbury Bridge reported seeing a midget submarine in the area weeks after the attack in Sydney.George Johnson, 83, said he was manning a spotlight at Brooklyn a few weeks after the attack in Sydney when his unit spotted the periscope of a midget submarine."We fired once with the Bofors gun and the gunner is sure he hit it," he said from his Townsville home."It went down and we didn't see it again. I have always been sure it sank in the Hawkesbury River entrance."
© 2005 Sun Herald