Stars
and Stripes over Pratas Island
The US occupied the small island for a day towards the end of
World War II
By John J. Tkacik, Jr.
Mon, Nov 05, 2018 - Page 8, Taipei Times
Submarine crews in wartime generally know the
date and time, but often lose track of the days. And the nights. On Tuesday May
29, 1945, just a few minutes past zero-hundred hours, the USS Bluegill, a
Gato-class American submarine, burst up through ghostly phosphorescent waves
and into the glistening full-moonlit sea about three miles southwest of Pratas
atoll in the South China Sea.
Within minutes, the topside hatches swung open.
Emerging crewmen hoisted boxes of ammo, firearms, radio sets and life vests on
deck. They assembled folding “fol-boats” and a large rubber equipment boat
under the eye of two Australian commando officers assigned to the sub. When all
was ready, the commandos boarded a fol-boat alongside in the sea froth, then
loaded the gear, explosives and automatic weapons. With their oars, the
commandos pushed off from the sub’s steel hull, paddled easily and quietly
toward the dimly visible white beaches on a 70-minute trip to low-lying Pratas
Island, also known as Tungsha Island.
When the rubber boat swept with gentle breakers
onto the nighttime sands, the two men leaped into the foam and dragged it into
the beach’s scrub fringe. They listened for any hint of a Japanese garrison.
Nothing. Shouldering their weapons, they scouted up the underbrush margins to
discover trenches, foxholes, remains of recent campfires — but no humans.
Another several hundred yards on, they
confronted the nighttime shadows of two large wooden cannons guarded
ostentatiously by two motionless figures in Japanese navy uniforms.
“We watched and waited for what seemed forever
but was probably no more than five minutes,” one of the commandos later
recalled; the guards were not fierce Japanese kaigun rikusentai, the Japanese
Special Naval Landing Forces, but straw-stuffed scarecrows, armed with wooden
sticks, immovable sentries for makeshift lumber howitzers.
In a methodical four-hour night reconnaissance,
they crisscrossed the abandoned palm-forested island, its Japanese
radio-weather station, the concrete jetty and barracks buildings, from end to
end. On the north side of the encampment charcoal ash, fresh fruit and
still-thriving flowers in a small Shinto shrine told the Australians that the
island had been abandoned perhaps 10 days earlier. Confident that the island
was safe, the Australians returned to the beach and radioed their mother-ship.
The Bluegill’s commander, with the all-clear from the shore party, signaled
from the conning tower for the 10-man team on deck to load their landing boats
and make for the beach.
Once on the Pratas, the 12 invaders fanned out
through the encampment and pier areas to document the island’s topography,
facilities and supply stockpiles.
The submarine log reads: “We assembled around
the flag pole, and at 1022 on May 29, 1945, a handful of soldiers and sailors
stood at solemn attention while the Stars and Stripes slowly ascended the flag
pole and two captured Jap bugles blared forth. The land they now stood on was
US territory! A plaque was then affixed to the base of the pole certifying the
capture of the island by the crew of the USS Bluegill.”
Sadly, if the Pratas atoll was “US territory,”
its new owners lavished it with neither the dignity nor tender care due
sovereign property. The Americans departed on May 29 as quickly as they
arrived, carting off canned Japanese vegetables, war souvenirs, neglected
codebooks and any naval documents left unburnt. The Australian commandos set
explosive charges to the rest of it. The Pratas was a dismal pall of smoke as
the Bluegill set sail at 4:40pm that afternoon.
WITNESS TO WAR ON FORMOSAN SHORES
Two days later, the Bluegill entered a “newly
assigned area for life guard duty [southwest] of Takao [today’s Kaohsiung],”
where the war there, daily and mercilessly, still raged.
“Witnessed airstrike over Takao. Air literally
filled with friendly aircraft of all types. Our aircover has long since
deserted us.”
At one point, the Bluegill raced at top speed to
“recover eight aviators in the water some 60 miles up from coast just off the
beach [and] … forced to enter unknown mine fields in attempting to effect their
rescue.”
On its route, the Bluegill was pressed under the
waves by a rapidly closing Japanese seaplane bomber. At six o’clock that first
evening, another Japanese dive bomber caught the Bluegill in shallow water.
“Received one bomb. Surprised we weren’t
overwhelmed we were so close to beach. Our position inside harbor buoys of
Toshien harbor.”
To the Bluegill’s dismay, once she arrived at
the reported coordinates for the rescue of the downed-aviators, “No aviators
nor raft nor friendly aircraft in sight.”
A third Japanese dive bomber sighted the sub and
loosed a charge, and an hour later, a fourth Japanese aircraft dropped two
bombs. By nightfall, the Bluegill logbook lamented that “The cooperation of
friendly aircraft this date was remarkable by its absence.”
At sunup on June 1, the Bluegill had more than
enough air cover.
“The sky was black with friendly aircraft of all
types through most of the day.”
The sub watch team recorded American PBY
amphibious aircraft, B-24 and B-25 heavy bombers, the latest and most modern
P-38 and P-51 fighters, huge PB-2Y seaplane bombers, and the long-range
workhorse B-17 bombers.
“Quite an impressive and soul-satisfying sight,”
reads the submarine’s log.
“Soul-satisfying” perhaps to the officers and
crew of the Bluegill, but hellish nightmares to myriads of those living on
Taiwan in target cities ashore who endured that late spring monsoon of white
hot steel and shrapnel.
And the bombing went on. All day on June 2, “The
sky was again filled with own aircraft of all descriptions. Golly, but we’re
proud to be Americans.” On June 3, “The usual large number of friendly planes
were overhead throughout the day.”
Happily, no new calls for downed pilot rescues
came in the ensuing days. The relentless bombing quickly destroyed all coastal
defenses on Formosa. After a week, witness to the distant eruptions and
curtains of carpet bombing from well offshore, on June 6, the Bluegill handed
off lifeguard tasks to another submarine and headed southeast again, past the
Pratas Reef (their newly renamed “Bluegill Island”) and skirting farther to the
east of the marooned and beleaguered Japanese garrison holding out on the
Philippine island of Batan. Its destination was Saipan for replenishment and
resupply.
On July 2, 1945, the Commander of Submarine
Force Pacific formally reported to Naval headquarters in Washington DC that “in
a fitting ceremony on 29 May 1945 the Bluegill raised the national ensign on
Pratas Island and proclaimed it ‘Bluegill Island.’”
Commodore Merrill Comstock, proudly informed the
Pentagon that the USS Bluegill, one of his 465-boat submarine fleet’s 20 top
submarines, had been awarded a new combat insignia for the mission, and indeed
the Bluegill’s “Sixth Combat Mission” battleflag shows five Japanese warships
and nine merchant ships sunk, and one tropical island captured.
Seven decades later, it is tempting for military
and naval historians to rue missed opportunities, especially given the
unforeseen prominence of the hundreds of atolls, islets, reefs and sandbars of
the South China Sea. Pratas Island, occupied for a single day in 1945 by a handful
of American sailors, was a mere footnote-of-a-footnote in the
military-industrial holocaust that was the War in the Pacific, a war in which
the US was the principal victor and the sole occupying power of defeated Japan.
Today, by everyone’s common agreement, it belongs to a republic of China, but
which one? And so, now, it is simple fun to imagine what the 21st century
controversies in the South China Sea would have been like if Pratas had
remained “US territory” for more than one day in 1945.
John J. Tkacik, Jr. is a retired US foreign service officer who
has served in Taipei and Beijing and is now director of the Future Asia Project
at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
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