It was seven in the evening when the Hokuto arrived at its rendezvous point eighteen miles northeast of Torishima. At this latitude the setting sun had force enough to strike the sea with fierce intensity, but the water lay calm beneath the consuming rays, its surface slick and still except for a faint breeze from south-southeast.
The Wadatsumi was lowered into the water by a derrick and drawn by towlines to the Weather Service ship the Dai to Maru #3, where it was lifted once more and secured to the rear deck.
When the work was completed at dusk, the Hokuto sounded its departure siren at once and sailed off at full speed, bound for Torishima.
Onodera, leaving to Yuki the overseeing of the Wadatsumi s securing, left the afterdeck of the Daito Maru and went inside. As he was walking down a passageway, the door to the ward room opened and Yukinaga put his head out.
“Onodera,” he called. “Come in, we want you here, too.”
When Onodera stepped through the door, he saw some ten or more men, scientists and research personnel, gathered around the wardroom table, which was spread with sea charts and other papers.
“The Polynesian fishermen who were on the island when it sunk—where are they?” Tadokoro asked in a loud voice. “Are they on board?”
“We’ve just sent for them,” answered an elderly man who seemed every inch a university professor. “Tomorrow they’ll be transferred to an American naval ship and taken home.”
“It seems to me, gentlemen,” said Tadokoro, sizing up the group around the table, “that this is a lot of fuss to be making over an insignificant little island. Here we have the Weather Service, the Fisheries Bureau, the Technological Bureau, all going to the trouble of outfitting and dispatching a ship of this size. What was this island like anyway?”
“Well, a weather-survey ship discovered it only five or six years ago,” answered a man from the Weather Service. “It was very small—only one mile from north to south and eight hundred yards from east to west. The highest elevation was about two hundred feet.”
The door opened and a man of about fifty entered. His shoulders were incredibly broad, and the sun had turned his complexion swarthy. His arms, bared by his T-shirt were thick and powerful, and his body reeked of fish and engine oil. Behind him three tall men came hesitantly into the room, their skins coal black, their eyes staring wildly. Two of them wore what looked like ragged aloha shirts bleached by the sun, and the third, a torn undershirt darkened to a muddy brown. Their lips were thick, and the hair that covered their long, narrow heads spread out softly like the crest of a crane. The one who seemed to be the oldest had hair sprinkled with silver, and his face, chest, and upper arms were covered with blue tattooing.
The squat man who had led them in took off his oil-stained work cap, gave a polite bow, and then stood there uncertain and ill at ease.
“This is Mr. Yamamoto, whose fishing boat, the Suiten Mam 9, rescued the Polynesian fishermen,” the man from the Weather Service explained. “Since he can speak a bit of Polynesian, his captain was kind enough to send him to us with them.
These men, who were on the island when it went under, are fishermen from Uragasu Island, he says.”
“Let’s hear what you have to say,” said Tadokoro, indicating that they were to sit down. “I’m sure you’ve told the others already, but we would appreciate hearing it once again.”
“Well,” said the fisherman, “the day before, our ship was somewhere north-northeast of Yamome Rock in the northeast part of the Ogasawara chain, and we were fishing. In the after noon a weather report came warning about a tropical storm, and we got ready to clear out fast, but our engine started to act up. We could make headway, as far as that went, but it was slow going. The storm wasn’t supposed to amount to much, but when you spun the wheel, it didn’t respond right. And so we were in a situation in which something had to be done, and so we started thinking about what island we could shelter at. We decided to make for this island without a name rather than try for Torishima. We reached it just about sunset. We dropped anchor about seven hundred yards off the north side, and every body but the engineers got some sleep. It was really a dark night, cloudy without a single star.”
“What was the depth where you dropped anchor?” asked Yukinaga.