Michael Mair - Kaiten: Japans Secret Manned Suicide Submarine and the First American Ship It Sank in WWII

Long after the USS Mississinewa exploded and sank in the western part of the Pacific in 1944the home stretch of World War IIsurvivor John Mair was still filled with sadness and grief over the death of his shipmates and the suffering experienced by all who lived through that day. As much as he wanted to tell the story of the Miss, he felt the world also deserved to know about the strange and secret weapon Japan had created and used to sink his ship at Ulithi Atoll. Years later, in 2005, while John Mair lay dying, he made his son, Mike, promise that he would write the Miss story.

Mike, a businessman in the highly competitive field of audiovisual equipment and systems, took hundreds of hours from his busy life, which included a wife and children, to research the story of the Miss and the suicide submarine, called kaiten, that sank it. He read thousands of pages of books, articles and Navy action reports, consulted Japanese historians and former kaiten submariners, and interviewed dozens of surviving crewmembers of the oiler, and in some cases their sons, wives or other relatives. As he began to study the kaiten program and specifically the Kikusui Mission that went to Ulithi for the kill on November 20, 1944, he was struck by the realization that the men on both sides of the war held ideals and goals that were often the same, perhaps the greatest being the salvation of their own country and their own way of life. The means they chose to attain their goals were, perhaps, different, but their hopes for the future mirrored each other, at least on the level of the individual men who took up guns or dived deep in submarines. It is another matter why governments go to war.

As Mair began to piece together the massive amount of data he was gathering, he realized there was a big story to be told, bigger even than the tale of his fathers ship, the story of how a country like Japan could instill in its men a belief that their suicide could be the turning point for an otherwise all-but-lost war, and how one mans choice to live out that destiny would take so many American lives with him.

When Joy Waldron joined Mair to coauthor the book in the making, she brought with her three decades of journalistic experience and a specialty in underwater archaeology that had resulted in a WWII book, The USS Arizona: The Ship, the Men, the Pearl Harbor Attack, and the Symbol That Aroused America. Her extensive experience as an investigative journalist and her interviewing skills merged with Mairs years of research. The two uncovered previously unpublished documents and interviewed people who in some cases had never before spoken of their wartime experiences. They ultimately located and interviewed the pharmacists mate who, long ago, had made a very important discovery in the waters of Ulithi Lagoon, a discovery that is brought to light in this book and helps to resolve a long-unanswered question.

This is the story of how destiny brought all those lives together, a very human story set against the backdrop of the Pacific War.