Nagasaki by John Willis

Author:John Willis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mensch Publishing

The only man on board the submarine with any medical experience was a lowly pharmacist’s mate, Maurice Demers from Manchester, New Hampshire. Demers possessed extremely limited medical supplies to tend to the wounded. Crew members sluiced the oil and dirt from the POWs and what little remained of their clothing was cut off. Down in what was a now very crowded torpedo room, the survivors were given fresh American clothes to wear, followed by tea and soup. The highlight that evening was the first white bread they had eaten in three years.

Demers remembered, ‘they were half-dead creatures. Few of them could speak. They were just looking at you like they were ready to pass out or die any minute. They were in shock. I had to give fifteen of them morphine shots…their eyes were real bad. Full of oil and dirt.’5

It was night-time now and the Pampanito had picked up seventy-three men from the sea. That almost doubled the size of the crew and seriously overloaded the sub. There were no other survivors they could see in the gathering darkness, and so Commander Summers decided to head for shore. As Landon Davis reported formally at Pearl Harbour in 1944, ‘It was a good thing for us that we were able to pick every single man that we sighted…it was very lucky — I would have had to make the decision when to leave some of those poor souls back in the water.’6

That was exactly the decision that Eli Reich, commanding Sealion, was forced to make. They rescued fifty-four survivors. About half of them could not see because of the thick oil, and crew member Bill Hornkohl recalled the terrible state they were in. ‘Some of their flesh would actually start peeling off. I never expected half of them to survive anyway.’7 As darkness fell, Reich issued orders to leave. Perhaps he felt vulnerable laying still on the surface or maybe he thought he had no room on board for more men, even if he could find them in the deepening gloom. In any event, around 9 p.m., Sealion headed the 1800 miles to the nearest base at Saipan.

Some crew members were very unhappy with their commander’s call, others understood what a difficult decision it was. As the Sealion departed there were still survivors in the sea and their cries for help could he heard across the still waters. Submariner Joe Bates recalled a man yelling at the Sealion, desperate to be picked up. ‘We left the poor guy and I am sure he died.’ Bill Hornkohl was convinced there was more room below, and was distressed by the decision. ‘It hurt me very much. I never really knew why we left.’ Reich’s patrol report recognised there were men still alive. He wrote that ‘It was heartbreaking to leave so many dying men behind.’

Of course, the heartbreak was much greater for the men still in the ocean. For Arthur Bancroft and the five men with him it was horrifying to spot the submarine and then not be rescued.

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