Days after Hashimoto surrendered his boat, Paine drove to Kure and saw for himself the destruction that the atomic bomb, a uranium fission device called Little Boy, had wrought. In the wink of an eye, it had obliterated the once picturesque, 350-year-old city of Hiroshima and the smaller town of Kure. The ruins stretched on for miles. A ghostly, colorless ash cloaked everything he saw. Even the rain had a strange odor. Occasionally, a sick person would walk by. Another would wander pitifully among the rubble. Some peddled by on bicycles, their shoulders burdened with heavy water jugs. The somber sight was etched deeply in his memory.3
In early November, his new commanding officer, Commander James E. Stevens, had him group all the captured Japanese submarines together at Sasebo. He gave orders for them to be ready to get underway on four hours’ notice. The war had now been over for two months, and most of the Japanese submarines had been either demilitarized or scuttled. Many were, however, still moored in the harbor. The US had yet to decide on their disposition. As the acting division commander of Submarine Division 2, Paine commanded seven of the captured subs.
With his Japanese now slowly improving, he was able to work as smoothly as could be expected with his chief lieutenants, Murayama and Takezaki. Both spoke a bit of English. As the days wore on, a common but wholly unexpected bond formed between him and the Japanese officers. He was learning quite a bit about his former foes. Some information was militarily very important, like the tactics and patrol chronicles that each boat went through. Others were of more human interest. He learned firsthand from Murayama of the overwhelming, tearful emotions that the crew and officers shared as they launched the Kaiten suicide torpedoes. Other stories surprised him. For example, Takezaki admitted that his side had greatly overestimated how well their midget submarines might work in the first hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor. They should have been far more effective than they actually were. He also revealed to Paine the surprising fact that, as far as he knew, Japan never suspected that the US was successfully decoding their messages during the war under the covert Office of Strategic Services program code-named Operation Magic.
As they conversed, both he and the Japanese began using terms like “us” versus “them” to describe submarines versus surface ships—not Japanese versus American. His surprise at how quickly the bond formed from their shared experience so soon after the end of hostilities remained with him long after the war.
Most of the boats slated for scuttling that winter off Goto Shima, just off the western coast of Kyushu, had been gathered and moored in Sasebo Harbor by mid-November. They were mostly of the small, tactical variety that the Allies had seen plenty of during the war. But drawing very high interest were the gigantic boats of the I-400 Sen Toku (“Special Submarines”) class. The 5,500-ton leviathans were 400 feet long and nearly 40 feet high. Each had a crew of 145. Each aircraft-carrier submarine could deploy three M6A1 Seiran (“Mist from a Clear Sky”) specially designed aircraft. These could be folded up like origami and transported inside the thick-walled hangar of the submarine.4
Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of US Pacific submarine operations, had revealed to the fleet squadrons after V-J Day the never-completed mission of these massive super-subs. Parked off the US West Coast, their mission was to infest the North American continent with rats and mosquitoes infected with bubonic plague, cholera, and other agents of biological origin. During the war, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction had been secretly developed by General Ishii’s infamous medical experimentation laboratory in Harbin, Manchuria. There, the Japanese committed war crimes on a wide scale by injecting Chinese prisoners and civilians with awful contagions as part of its laboratory for human experimentation.
In March 1945, the Japanese Army General Staff changed the mission of the I-400 to one of bombing the Gatun Locks at the Panama Canal. This too was never carried through. In June, the super-subs were ordered to the Ulithi Atoll, where the American task force was assembling for the planned invasion of Japan. They then finally turned around and returned to the homeland in August after Japan’s surrender.
With an unheard-of 37,500-nautical-mile intercontinental cruise range, the Sen Toku were more than just another object of curiosity in the Axis arsenal of secret weapons. They were the largest submarines in the world. Their size and speed would be unmatched until modern-day nuclear submarines came onto the scene in the 1960s. With the advent of the atomic bomb, the US naval high command thought that the submarines could be used to launch ballistic missiles at sea. They wanted to see the submarines for themselves. It was up to Stevens and his men to bring them back to the US.
Paine was ordered to report to Commander J. M. McDowell as the executive officer on the I-400.5 Sailing a captured, classified submarine across the Pacific required a good amount of preparation. With no blueprints or instructions to work from, he had to be creative. He ordered the crew to salvage whatever parts and supplies they could scrounge from the remaining warehouses and caves around the shipyard. Since there was no plan to submerge the boat on the voyage back to the US, a lot of work was saved by not having to repair the snorkel and diving system. He made sure the sub was stocked with enough provisions for fourteen days. They had to first get to Guam. The boat would then be resupplied for the next leg of the voyage to the Marshall Islands, before the long voyage to Pearl Harbor. The men filled the cavernous hull with all sorts of war trophies: rifles, bayonets, Japanese uniforms, and even a seaworthy sampan. He kept a shiny, antique samurai sword for himself.
The trio of submarines (the I-14, I-400, and I-401) got underway for Guam on December 11, 1945. Paine managed to get out a quick telegram home before embarking: “CAPT G T PAINE USN 450 OCEAN AVE SEALBEACH CALIF MERRY CHRISTMAS EASTBOUND JAP SUB HOME SOON TOM USS EURYALE”6 They headed southeast out of Japan, slowly at first, to steer well clear of the unswept minefields west of Kyushu. They passed through the Tokara Gunto, a passage south of Kyushu that was often the scene of heavy combat. Upon reaching the open waters of the Pacific, it was full speed ahead.
Up in the conning tower, he no longer scoured the sea for enemy mastheads and periscopes. When he went to the bridge at twilight to get a star sighting, he stifled the urge to douse the running light. The pleasure of peacetime sailing began to sink in. He wrote in his journal in large letters: “WE OWNED THE SEA!”
Nearing Guam, McDowell was nervous about the keel clearance of the massive boat. A new pipeline had just been laid in the shallow channel of Agana Harbor that was not marked on the charts. But earlier in the war Paine had received his Second Class Deep Sea Diver certification there and knew the variances of the muddy terrain. McDowell handed the helm over to him. Twenty minutes later, the I-400 was in port.
After a brief layover for R and R, the squadron continued on. They took an easterly course to the Marshall Islands, two thousand miles away. Christmas Eve saw them carefully navigating the low-lying reefs around Eniwetok Atoll, the site of many future nuclear weapon tests. McDowell did what he could to keep morale up on the long journey home. He posted a poem in the control room that evening after dinner. Paine jotted down the words on a scrap piece of paper that he kept for the next forty-five years:
“Christmas at Sea,