2 Civilians Were at Sub Controls During Collision

Two civilians were at the controls of the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Greeneville when it collided with a Japanese fishing vessel, leaving nine people lost at sea, a Navy official said Tuesday. The news prompted outrage from survivors of the accident, who spoke publicly for the first time.

Lt. Cmdr. Conrad Chun of the Pacific Fleet said that two of the 15 civilian guests taking an “orientation tour” of the Greeneville were manning watch stations during the dramatic emergency-surfacing operation in which the sub rocketed upward into the trawler filled with teenage students.

Chun did not elaborate on what the guests were doing at two of the dozens of stations in the submarine. But a senior Navy official, who requested that his name not be used, said that the civilians were sitting at two of the three key positions in the control room when the surfacing procedure took place.

One of the visitors was sitting at the helmsman’s seat, holding the helm, which looks something like the steering wheel of an aircraft. His assignment was simply to hold the helm steady so that the sub’s rudder and bow plane, which control forward and sideways motion, would not move.

The second visitor was at the ballast controls, which regulate up-and-down motion. This visitor was assigned to push buttons that expel water from the sub’s ballast tanks, causing the vessel to rise to the surface.

“I can confirm that there were civilians participating in two of the watch stations during the time of the incident,” Chun said. “But let me emphasize that it was under the direct supervision of a qualified watch operator.”

Visitors carry out these tasks on dozens of sub trips each year, the Navy official said, “and I can’t imagine a scenario in which it would have made a difference” to have the visitor sitting at either spot.

The Ehime Maru, which was operated by a vocational high school in southwestern Japan, was scouting tuna stocks nine miles off Diamond Head on Friday afternoon when the Greeneville came up under it, splitting it open and sending its terrified crew and students racing for life vests and safety.

Ryoichi Miya, first navigator of the doomed trawler, was furious when he heard Tuesday afternoon that civilians were manning the controls of the submarine.

“As a sailor, that is definitely not the right thing to do, for a civilian to be at the helm,” Miya said during a news conference in which 14 of the survivors told harrowing tales of the accident. “What was the purpose? I don’t believe that this is permitted.”

Twenty-six people were saved when the Ehime Maru sank off the coast of Oahu--throwing its home country into a frenzy and the U.S. military into action. Nine of those who were on board are still missing.

The crew members who spoke Tuesday recounted the fear and confusion of a normal day gone suddenly awry. When the Greeneville split their trawler open in the choppy waters of the Pacific, some of the men were resting in their bunks. Others were washing up or eating a late lunch.

First there was sound: a loud, resonant impact, followed by a higher, piercing tone of shearing metal. Then the lights blinked off. And the shouts began, panicked, beseeching: Tomo! Tomo! Go to the back of the boat!

The water raced into the foundering trawler--so fast, many said, that there was just no way to jump overboard. One moment they were standing, the next swimming.

Tuesday was the first time the men had joined to describe the accident to the public. They filed in, somber, to the Japanese Cultural Center here. They wore matching dark blue T-shirts. They told similar tales, brief stories with big gaps, as if shock had wiped their memories nearly clean.

“I knew I had to go to the deck, so I did,” recalled first navigator Miya. “How I got to the deck, I can’t remember.”

In the moments after impact, Miya recounted, he climbed from his quarters to the fishing boat’s upper decks--seeing the skipper, distributing life vests, then deciding it would be much safer to get away from the Ehime Maru.

“I started swimming,” Miya said. “I did not jump out, the water was just that high. It was just an instant. I swam. . . . I was getting very tired. I was resting on my back. The boat became lopsided.”

Soon after the Ehime Maru sank, Miya was scooped into a life raft and waited for rescue, he said, pausing. Then came a gentle prompt from Japanese consul Ikuhiko Ono: And how do you feel now?

“I am hoping,” said the man with the close-cropped hair and the haggard face, “that as soon as possible you would find the ones that are missing. If we find the missing, we would feel a little better. Right now, I am not feeling very well.”

Deckhand Shukuo Nakamura was standing on the bridge of the Ehime Maru on Friday afternoon about 2 p.m., scanning the horizon with a telescope: first the front of the boat, then the side. It was his job, he said, to help ensure “a safe voyage.”

He heard a “weird sound.” Then he saw the submarine. Water began pouring into his ship. “I felt this was really a terrible accident,” Nakamura recounted Tuesday from the safety of a Honolulu ballroom, surrounded by his shipmates. “Everyone else was in panic. Everyone was screaming.”

“Tomo! Tomo! Get to the back!” There was shouting and running and struggle. Students and crew members splashed around, heading for their mustering spots, the places they had learned to go in the event of a disaster. Nakamura told the students to get into the life rafts first.

“There was a huge, big wave,” he continued. “By the time I noticed, I was in the water already. . . . I got in the raft and I looked at the ship, and it went down.”

The Coast Guard is continuing its search and rescue mission, scouring thousands of square miles of empty ocean for some sign of those lost: four students, two teachers, three crew members. But the longer such an operation continues, the greater the probability that bodies will be found instead of people--if anything is found at all.

That did not seem to matter Tuesday to survivors of the Ehime Maru. Each man told his simple story: Impact, panic, rescue. Each man was asked the same question: How do you feel now? Each man gave a nearly identical answer, the sad refrain of an anguished ballad.

Makoto Hotta, deckhand: “Please rescue the rest of the nine as soon as possible.”

Fumio Kogusuri, deckhand: “Speedy rescue as soon as possible.”

Hidekatsu Kimura, engineer: “I want you to look for the rest of the others. Please get them.”

When the Ehime Maru was struck by the Greeneville, the contingent of civilians was aboard the sub as part of an ongoing public relations effort by the Navy.

With the end of the Cold War, journalists and local business and government leaders have been invited aboard submarines--sometimes staying overnight during training missions.

During the Cold War, submariners were threatened with courts-martial if they described their jobs or the capability of their subs to outsiders, even to their family members. Subs departed and returned at night, with none of the ritual that attends the movements of other ships.

The secrecy kept the public from knowing of the harrowing confrontations that were common between submarines from the U.S. and Soviet Union.

But today, by taking civilians aboard submarines, Navy officials hope to rally public support as the Bush administration considers whether to continue cutting the number of subs in the U.S. fleet.

Chun said that it is “not uncommon” for civilians to participate in a wide range of training exercises. “The type of maneuver that was conducted [by the Greeneville] is done regularly in training.”

Acknowledging the survivors’ anger, Chun said the collision “is a very tragic accident. Let me assure you that whenever civilians are on these various stations, they are under very close supervision to ensure safety.”

The Navy would not identify the 15 civilians. Chun only said that they were business leaders who asked that their names not be used.

Several news organizations have sought release of the names under the Freedom of Information Act, and it is possible that the names may come out within the next several days, the Navy official said.

As the probe into the accident continues, the NTSB searched the Greeneville inside and out Tuesday and began interviewing the crew.

8

Times staff writers Paul Richter in Washington and Tony Perry in San Diego contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Who’s at the Controls

There are usually 12 to 15 people crowded in a nuclear submarine control room, including officers, enlisted personnel and sometimes visitors. Shown here is the control room of a Los Angeles-class sub similar to the Greeneville, which was involved in last week’s accident. The Navy says one civilian was at the helm and a second was at the ballast controls at the time of the accident.

*

Sources: “Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship,” by Tom Clancy;

“Hunters of the Deep,” by Time Life Books; Associated Press; staff reports