MANOA, HAWAII—A team from the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL), the University of Hawaii, California State University-Chico, Naval History and Heritage Command, and the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum has located four of the five imperial Japanese submarines sunk by the United States off the coast of Oahu in 1946. The U.S. Navy captured the submarines at the end of World War II, and brought them to Pearl Harbor for inspection. They then sank the vessels rather than give the Soviet Union access to them under the terms of the treaty that ended the war. The team also used both of HURL’s human-occupied submersibles, Pisces IV and Pisces V, to recover the bronze bell from I-400, one of the “Sen-Toku” class submarines. “These historic properties in the Hawaiian Islands recall the events and innovations of World War II, a period which greatly affected both Japan and the United States and re-shaped the Pacific region. Wreck sites like the I-400 are reminders of a different time, and markers of our progress from animosity to reconciliation,” Hans Van Tilburg of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a press release. To read more, go to "The Archaeology of World War II."
