Collision

Overhead bright stars peered through the inky blackness striving hopelessly with their concentrated brilliance to make up for a lost moon. A few lazy clouds squatted like Stygian hills on an undefinable horizon, exaggerating the awful nigrescence of a dead night. Not a breath of wind stirred the air, and underneath the green sea lapped wickedly as it broke into little crests of foam. Suddenly the atmosphere vibrated to the staccato dots and dashes of radio--Admiral Kwanji Kato was ordering a night destroyer attack in the Japanese naval maneuvers in the Sea of Japan, 20 miles northeast of Mihoseki. The fleet broke up into attacking and defending parties. The defending warships threw out a smoke screen to hide the flashes of their guns. Bombardment be- gan under battle conditions. Cutting through the sea at full speed, the 850-ton destroyers Warabi and Ashi rode out to meet the "enemy," dashing fearlessly through the man-made fog. Out of the gloom rose of a sudden two ironclad monsters, the 6,000-ton cruisers Jintsu and Naka. Too late to turn, useless to reverse en- gines--into the hulking cruisers the tiny destroyers crashed with deaf- ening impact. In 15 minutes the Warabi was lying 60 fathoms beneath the surface of the sea, the captain, eleven officers and 90 men drowned. Only 22 of the crew were saved. The Ashi, which had apparently skimmed the Naka, remained afloat with a great gash in her bows. But the impact had knocked 27 men to a swift death in the cold, briny water. The Naka was not badly damaged.

The cruiser Jintsu, with a great gaping hole made by the Warabi, listed forward sharply and was towed in this precarious condition toward the Maizuru dockyards by the Kongo. The Ashi was also towed toward land by the Abukama. Neither cruiser lost any men. Total casualties were therefore 129 officers & men.

All Japan mourned and Emperor Hirohito sent a special representative to the fleet to express his sympathy. From Washington Acting Secretary of the Navy Theodore Douglas Robinson cabled:

"I learn with great distress of the accident resulting in the loss of so many gallant officers and men and the sinking of the Warabi.

"The realization that such a disaster must be accepted as a constant risk in the operation of an active and progressive naval organization increases the profound sympathy which I desire to express on the part of the United States Navy to the Japanese Admiralty and to the families of those lost." The collisions were the second disaster in the Japanese navy to occur this August and the sixth to occur within seven years, five of which took place in the month of August. During this period the toll of lives has been more than 500.