Transcript
On the way over there was 11 ships in my convoy. It was an old tramp ship ours, called the Weills Maru. I think it took us nearly three weeks to get to Japan, and I was on board, up on deck where [they were doing] haircutting, and this day, the siren went on the boat. All Japs went running everywhere, and next thing, this thing shot across the front of our boat. It was a torpedo. There was a Japanese cruiser was escorting 11 ships. This one cruiser, and they fired two torpedoes at it, and they missed it.
They never hit the ship. But they dropped depth charges. The depth charges made the engines on our boat conk out. We were left bobbing around in the ocean. The other 10 ships went, left us. This is lovely. We didn't know whether they got the submarine or what happened. We thought, "Well, if it comes back, it'll definitely probably get us this time." Of course, two days later, the siren went again. We were all herded down below. Put the hatch on. Canvas on top of that.
We couldn't have got out, so it was just a matter of waiting to be torpedoed. We heard the firing, the gun up the front of the boat and on the back of the boat. It all went quiet, and we heard this laughter going on. It turned out it was a piece of bamboo was bobbing around the ocean, and they thought it was a telescope of a submarine. We were pleased. So we managed to get to Moji, Japan. Yeah. Long time after the other boats.
