Shinkoku Maru – Death from the Night Sky
The sun set on Truk Lagoon on the evening of February 17, 1944. A lumbering, 500-foot-long ship slowly came to a stop in the choppy waters; its anchor let loose from the hawsepipe and slipped below the tropical waters in search of sandy bottom. The wind swung the ship around and the anchor grabbed hold. The Japanese 10,000-ton, fleet oiler, Shinkoku Maru, was then secured to the seabed. Repeated strafing and torpedo runs kept the Shinkoku on the run, within the confines of the lagoon, throughout the entire day. Captain Hidenoshin Nakajima instructed his first officer, Tokiya Mizutani, to maintain blackout conditions for their vessel during the evening. The crew rested easier under the cover of darkness, for they narrowly escaped destruction from raiding, carrier-based, US Naval planes.
Many other Japanese ships in Truk Lagoon were not so lucky. There were more than 1000 casualties, dozens of ships sunk, and hundreds of planes destroyed that day, and, although the crews weren’t aware of the tally of death and destruction, they could see it all around them. The smell of burning ships fouled the air, and dense, black smoke blotted the sky. The crew of the Shinkoku were a few of the lucky ones, for the moment. Little did they know that the United States Navy was not finished with Truk Lagoon. The blackness of night would not protect them for what was about to come.
Turning her bow into the wind, the aircraft carrier USS prepared Torpedo Squadron Ten for takeoff. They were 100, along with the rest of Carrier Task Force 58, just spent the day battering the Japanese from the air in a raid codenamed “Operation Hailstone,” but their work was far from over.
