On 7th December 1941, even as Japanese carrier-launched aircraft were
winging their way toward Pearl Harbor, a small American cargo ship chartered by
the US 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 US 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
the Second World War. 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.
