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(More customer reviews)Reviewed in "Armchair General" Magazine (online)
Everyone knows that Japan's first shot of the Pacific War against the United States was fired at Pearl Harbor, 7:55 a.m. Honolulu time the morning of December 7, 1941, when the first wave of aircraft making the surprise attack descended on the unsuspecting U. S. Pacific Fleet. But is what "everyone knows" wrong? Stephen Harding's fascinating new book, Voyage to Oblivion: A Sunken Ship, a Vanished Crew and the Final Mystery of Pearl Harbor, examines an intriguing incident that took place on the same morning as the Pearl Harbor attack and that raised the possibility that perhaps the history books on the Pacific War might need to be re-written.
Mid-ocean between Seattle and Honolulu that fateful December 7 morning, Japanese fleet submarine I-26, skippered by Commander Minoru Yokota (Hasegawa), intercepted, opened fire with its 5.5-inch deck gun and eventually sank the American steamer, Cynthia Olson, sailing to Hawaii under U. S. Army contract with a load of lumber. Although we know with relative certainty that the first American shots of the Pacific war were those fired at 6:37 a.m. (over an hour before the first Japanese planes arrived over Pearl Harbor) by the destroyer USS Ward when it engaged a Japanese midget submarine attempting to enter the anchorage, was the first Japanese round fired in anger the I-26's opening 5.5-inch shell (fired across the Cynthia Olson's bow forcing the unarmed merchant ship to stop dead in the water)? Harding expertly sifts through all the available evidence regarding the Cynthia Olson, the I-26 and the two vessels' fatal encounter, then applies his reasoned judgment - honed by his years as a defense journalist, author and senior editor of Military History magazine - to solve, as the book's subtitle notes, this "final mystery of Pearl Harbor." And, no, I'm not going to reveal Harding's solidly-argued conclusion in this review. Buy the book and find out - you'll certainly want to add it to your military history bookshelf in any event.
Actually, Harding's engagingly-written account examines - among other fascinating items - the two principal mysteries surrounding the sinking of Cynthia Olson: Did the timing of the Japanese submarine's attack precede the larger Pearl Harbor air strike? And, what ultimate fate befell the merchant steamer's 35-man crew? The latter mystery is especially poignant, as Harding introduces readers to the Cynthia Olson's captain, ship's officers and crew, as well as several of their wives, forced to endure years of not knowing their husbands' fates while wrestling with the suffocating and frustrating military bureaucracy. Interestingly, 23 of the Cynthia Olson's 35-man crew were Filipinos, and their disappearance when the ship sank made them among America's first casualties of the Pacific War - two weeks before the Japanese invaded their home country and launched attacks against General Douglas MacArthur's forces defending the Commonwealth. The families of Cynthia Olson's Filipino sailors living in the Philippines, therefore, faced double tragedies: the disappearance of the sailors and the invasion of their country and subsequent brutal Japanese occupation.
Since Cynthia Olson's crew - to a man - all simply vanished in the wake of the ship's sinking by I-26, leaving no trace (beyond a photograph of the ship going down taken by an I-26 officer, revealing that Cynthia Olson's lifeboats had been launched), determining exactly what happened to the merchant sailors is problematic and, of necessity, speculative. Yet, Harding's thorough investigation and logical conclusion of the sailors' fate seems unquestionably to be what happened to them. Again, we encourage readers to buy this "must read" book to find out what Harding concludes must have happened to Cynthia Olson's "vanished crew."
This reviewer was first introduced to the Cynthia Olson's story in a short reference to the ill-fated ship in Racing the Sunrise: The Reinforcement of America's Pacific Outposts, 1941-1942 (USNI Press, 2010), Glen Williford's ground-breaking and authoritative account of the efforts to build up the United States' military bases in the Pacific as war with Japan loomed and during the war's first few weeks. But that necessarily brief account only whetted one's appetite to learn more about the ship, its crew, and the maritime mystery surrounding Cynthia Olson's fate. Harding's exhaustive, book-length investigation, therefore, comes as a welcome feast of information about the merchant steamer, its "vanished crew" and the December 7, 1941, submarine attack that sent it to the bottom.
Reviewed by Jerry D. Morelock, Editor in Chief, Armchair General Magazine
ACG rates this "MUST READ" book 5 Stars, our highest rating.
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On Dec. 7, 1941, even as Japanese carrier-launched aircraft were winging their way toward Pearl Harbor, a small American cargo ship chartered by the U.S. Army reported it was being attacked by a submarine about halfway between Seattle and Honolulu. After that one cryptic message the humble lumber carrier Cynthia Olson and her crew vanished without a trace, their disappearance all but forgotten as the mighty warships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet burned.Though long relegated to footnote status in Pacific War histories, the story of Cynthia Olson's mid-ocean encounter with the Japanese submarine I-26 is both a classic high-seas drama and one of the most enduring mysteries of World War II. Did Commander Minoru Yokota of I-26 disregard orders and sink the freighter before the attack on Pearl Harbor began, running the risk of alerting the Americans to the impending assault? Did master mariner Berthel Carlsen and his 34-man crew survive their vessel's sinking only to drift away into the vast Pacific, or were they machine gunned in their lifeboats at the orders of Yokota, who after the war became a devout Christian? Was Cynthia Olson the first American casualty of the Pacific War, and could her SOS have changed the course of history?Based on years of research, Voyage to Oblivion explores both the military and human aspects of the Cynthia Olson story, bringing to life a complex tale of courage, tenacity, hubris and arrogance in the opening hours of America's war in the Pacific.
