Truk Lagoon’s Master Diver Kimiuo Aisek
Author Dianne M. Strong
The book begins with beautiful dedications. Among those who dived with Kimiuo were John F. Kennedy Jr.
If you want to know more about the history of Truk. Not just about what kind of wreck lies where, what kind of tonnage and what kind of artillery, but simply how the war on Truk was fought, how its inhabitants lived against the background of the history of the place then this is the book for you.
The author has made more than forty trips to Truk with her husband and, in her own words (she teaches professional writing at the university), “a biography is a story made under oath.”
There are three wrecking gems in the world. One is the place where the German fleet was specifically sunk in 1919 that is Scapa Flow in Scotland, the second is Bikini Atoll where two atomic test explosions sank massive warships in 1946, and the third is Laguna Truk where a huge number of Japanese transport ships and their cargo were sunk after an aerial attack in February 1944.
The book describes Diver Kimiuo Aisek and the ship Aikoku Maru (the wreck later became the logo of Aikoku’s company Blue Lagoon Dive Shop opened on November 13, 1973) that is 50 years ago.
The story is about the Truk Atoll called so when Truk was a German and then Japanese mandate territory and after World War II. When Truk became part of the Federation of Micronesia in 1986 it began to be called Chuuk State. Similar nomenclature combined with a similar chronology is used in the book.
The Japanese took over Truk when the Japanese ship Karuma called at the lagoon on October 12, 1914. In 1919, the League of Nations officially transferred 2,000 islands in the Pacific as mandated territories. Similarly, the Marshal Islands, Palau or the Mariana Islands were handed over. All former German colonies with the exception of the American territories namely the island of Guam. The Civil Administration of the islands was established in 1922
Rather, the story shows the good neighborly relations between the still young Kimiuo and the soldiers and sailors of the Japanese fleet that came to Truk Lagoon after the outbreak of war. Kimiuo’s family meets Japanese welder Uchida, who favored visits to Kimiuo’s family home and the food served there, which he supplemented with rationed beer, over visits to seafarer bars staffed by the local “Geisha.”
In 1943 Uchida is transferred to the ship Aikoku Maru – Aikoku means love of the motherland and Maru (circle) is the traditional name of the ship referring to something that disappears and returns so it is such a good omen. Maru is an obligatory part of the name of Japanese ships and vessels. The Aikoku Maru was launched in 1940 as a passenger-transport liner for Japan’s South America line.
Kimiuo is becoming increasingly friendly with the Japanese NCO. Working on small boats carrying supplies on the Aikoku Maru, he often meets Uchida and tours the ship with him.
During his work, Kimiuo also becomes acquainted with the mighty 255-meter-long battleship Yamato and its twin brother the battleship Musashi, both launched in great secrecy in 1940. Yamato is the ancient name of Japan, the cradle of Japanese civilization. Yamato was stationed at Truk from 1942 to 1943. In February 1944, U.S. forces took back more Pacific islands from the Japanese are taking steps toward Japan’s main islands. After the victory in the Marshall Islands, their attention turned to Truk. The Americans decided to neutralize this base on February 2, 44.
Kimiuo met young pilots from Japanese aircraft carriers. Some of them were really young. One of the pilots describing his story is 16 years old. In 1942, they were young and very inexperienced. This pilot mentions only 20 days of flight training. “We barely managed to learn how to land. There was no time to learn air combat. We were practically powerless when we flew without visibility of the shore.
The Japanese believed that Truk, called the Gibraltar of the Pacific, would never be attacked by the Americans, but after a reconnaissance on February 4, an American attack came.
The base on Truku was also used as a training site where the mighty battleships Musashi and Yamato fired their eighteen-inch artillery. Each shell fired from their guns weighed 1.4 tons. However, after the February Fourth reconnaissance, Admiral Koga decided to have the two battleships and the navy leave the Truk area and sail away. The entire fleet of warships departed on February 10, 44. Only about 50 merchant ships remained there, being used as supply ships.
On February 17 before dawn, the Americans launched a full surprise attack. Such a response for Pearl Harbor. This is the first time in the history of the U.S. fleet that aircraft have taken off and landed on aircraft carriers at night. This attack was dubbed Operation Hailstone.
The 72 aircraft took off from the aircraft carriers Bunker Hill, Yorktown, Enterprise, Intrepid and Essex. Helldiver bombers, torpedo Avengers, SBT Douglas bombers in 2 days destroyed the entire fleet on Truk.
This attack the Kimiuo family survived thanks to the cave in which they took shelter from the bombing. However, Kimiuo himself was too curious during the bombing and slipped out of cover and ran to the headland to watch the American attack.
He watched as American planes attacked Truk. At one point, there was a powerful explosion that scattered metal rain, elements from the blasted ship, all over Lagoon.
In the midst of two days of US air strikes, Kimiuo meets a new Japanese officer, Lieutenant Sasai. Kimiuo helps him with all the problems associated with life on the tropical island.
After the bombing of supply ships on Truk, Japanese soldiers begin to starve. The official daily ration of rice in 1942 was 850 grams and in 45 it was reduced to 400 grams but still did not always reach soldiers.
Kimiuo and his stories of living with the Japanese during the war
Kimiuo continues to help Japanese soldiers. He teaches them how to use local fruits and how to prepare meals from them. The two-day bombing kills many fish in the lagoon. Kimiuo collects floating fish and brings them back for the soldiers.
Kimiuo is also helping to build barracks for the soldiers staying in Truk.
Sam learns very important principles for soldiers related to the observance of honor. Soldiers meditate daily on the most important principles. The most important rule is obedience to the emperor.
Kimiuo receives a samurai sword from one of the officers, taking it as an initiation into the imperial Japanese army, the fact that he has now become someone who serves the Emperor. The relationship between the Micronesians and their “authorities” the Japanese is tangled.
Kimiuo notes the differences in the behavior of sailors versus Japanese soldiers. Officers explain that sailors sailing on ships in different places have learned a bit about the world of other people and cultures and have a slightly different attitude toward strangers than soldiers.
The story of how Japanese soldiers are proud to work with Kimiuo and treat him as a friend is intertwined with the tale of a Buddhist Monk who is a soldier operating a heavy machine gun in the service of the emperor.
The story and attempts to explain the sadism of Japanese soldiers and officers; their notion of honor and their sense of being insulted by the superiority of the Americans. In the end, this led to Japanese abuse of prisoners of war and the Japanese losing the war.
Kimiuo also learns that a Japanese soldier never gives up. For him, this is the biggest crime. To be taken to no will alive to dishonor.
He witnesses Japanese soldiers’ abuse of American prisoners of war, who are treated as punching bags in bayonet attacks.
The story is full of such contradictions,
Japanese officer Sasai recounted that Japanese airmen refused to take parachutes. If they received them, they put them on the seat but did not fasten themselves into the harness. They did not want when they were shot down in hostile territory to be taken prisoner.
Even civilians as happened on Saipan jumped into the abyss to avoid falling into the hands of the Americans.
When the soldiers left for the mountains it was their lieutenant who offered Kimiuo a rifle as a reward for his help to the platoon.
In May, after the destruction of the fleet, the famine began. The Japanese had no food supplies.
After the war, there were reports of cannibalism among Japanese soldiers as Kimiuo recounts.
From November second to fifth, the US ship Columbia was stationed in the bay. After the first American visit, occupation forces arrived in Truk on November 25, 1945. An American army camp was set up and the Americans began to take over the islands.
In November 1945, U.S. forces began transporting Japanese to the Japanese Islands. 38,000 soldiers and sailors were taken from Truk alone. Also, many thousands of civilians were transported on militarized Japanese ships.
In addition to Japanese soldiers, Truk was inhabited by1590 Japanese civilians, 9085 Truk residents, 791 Micronesians, 8 Germans, 7Spaniards and 6 Chinese. All Japanese were deported which was sometimes very distressing for their families coming from Truk. The Japanese, according to the orders, could only stay on Truk if they proved that they had been there for more than one generation.
Also described is the history of courts-martial of war criminals, some of whom were sentenced to death by hanging. The primary charge was the murder of American prisoners of war, which was a war crime. The Japanese and their peculiar military honor caused, that is, to be insulted, humiliated by the American army and the upbringing did not allow surrender. These problems are described in the classic book “Chrysanthemums and the Sword”
The Japanese had a “sick” concept of honor, which mandated doing certain things and did not prohibit doing others, as the European concept of honor most often imposes.
The book also describes his childhood in Kimiuo. It’s how he became an adopted child. Kimiuo’s adoption stemmed from a beautiful Micronesian tradition, when a childless couple simply asks another couple who has another child that they want to adopt their child at birth. Plenty of residents there agree to such an extension of the family.
You could say that his future stepmother simply disowned Kimiuo by constantly going to visit his parents.
Micronesian children experienced tremendous emphasis on learning Japanese at school. The story may remind us of the early novels about Tomek’s (Szklarski) adventures in learning Russian during the Russification of Polish schools.
Laguna Truk is the second largest lagoon in the world. It measures 125 miles and surrounds many volcanic islands with very high peaks. Anyway, Chuuk means mountain in the local language but at the time when the Germans administered the archipelago they pronounced it as Truk and hence its popular name.
The book also tells about the normal life of Micronesians
Kimiuo loves to go to the highest peaks of the Truk Lagoon where he catches wild chickens which he and his friends then prepare for cockfights. As he recounts, “when you lost you lost a chicken and had nothing to eat.” He became employed as a chaser, riding his bicycle carrying information and dispatches for the Japanese administration.
The book also describes the economic development of the people of Truk during Japanese rule. Large numbers of Japanese began arriving on the islands, resulting in an expanding economy both from what one might call tourism and also from the development of bases that received passing Japanese merchant ships.
Kimiuo describes how he initially searched for wrecks using the method of probing them with a hand-held probe, that is, using a rope with a weight.
He also worked on a schooner that sailed between the islands carrying copra and local schoolchildren heading home to school.
Kimiuo became the first officer to come from Micronesia and circulated on a yacht between Guam, Truk and Phonpei Island.
During this period, Kimiuo also learned to dive on a two-hose automatic aqualunga.
Kimiuo’s next job is a seven-year stint in Hawaii when he learned professional fishing and circulated between Guam, Truk, Pohnpei and Kwajalalein.
At the time, the U.S. government was trying to develop industry in Micronesia, and as we experienced ourselves on Pohnpei is trying to continue to do so.
Kimiuo participated in typical tuna fishing at the time. He cast the hook, plucked the tuna from under the water, unhooked it in one motion and gently gave it behind him and the hook flew overboard again. For those who like to hunt tuna, this is said to be the most beautiful method.
After seven years as a fisherman in Hawaii, Kimiuo returned to Truk in 1968 at the age of 40. I managed to save $6,000 so bought a boat with a 40-horsepower engine a Evinruda. He was a fisherman and at the same time worked in cooperation with scientists from various centers to control crown of thorns starfish that were destroying the local reef.
In the 1960s, he began collaborating on the Crown of Thorns starfish destruction project in the Truk lagoon area. This species of starfish has been accused of destroying coral reefs indiscriminately for years, and they are being massively killed in various areas.
He began working as a diver for the Crown of Thorns Control Fund in the Truk area, and recruited divers for Crown of Thorns propagation control teams on Palau and Saipan as well.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the team received a grant for the then mighty sum of $75,000. He purchased the yacht “Surfrider” which was equipped with a compressor, 8 cylinders with reserve valves (type J) and equipment for killing Crowns of Thorns (poisoned them with formalin injections).
Kimiuo became the natural head of the Micronesian divers working for the fund.
What would a diving story be without decompression sickness. In 1970, while diving after fish, Kimiuo’s partner had a no-air situation at 30 meters. (The divers did not have pressure gauges). The partner took Kimiuo’s automatic and did not give it back. They emerged quickly . Kimiuo was paralyzed from the waist down. Fortunately, he was given oxygen and an IV and was transported to Guam to a chamber on the ship USS Proteus. Overnight, the symptoms subsided. In 1970, Kimiuo earned his first diving certification.
Their adventures are reminiscent of the stories of young Pyle (the one from deepstops) when he was a young marine biologist. Divers suffered from the toxins of crown of thorns and other venomous creatures. They had no marshmallows, and used jeans as some protection.
Those were the days when a mouth-blown BCD was a breath of modernity. The equipment was completed with a knife on the leg, fins and an oval mask.
The times of the pioneers when there was no airport on Pohnpei and landed by seaplanes at sea.
By 1975, $4.5 million had been spent on the fight against crowns of thorns.
In the early 1970s, divers on Truk began clearing the wrecks of lying and threatening bombs for tourists.
And one day American diver Peter Wilson invited Kimiuo to go wreck diving “just for fun.”
“On those rusty sheets,” responded Kimiuo, “what for?”
However, they dived on the wreck of the Kiyosumi Maru and Kimiuo soaked in forever.
Age of jets
The Micronesian islands including Truk were discovered for tourists by Continental airliners after their first arrival on May 9, 1968. Specially prepared Boeing 727-100 aircraft, after consultation with Alaska Airlines (short-belt specialists), were equipped with larger wheels, powerful engines and brakes. The standard procedure was to fly over the airport before landing to chase away cars, baseball players and picnickers on the strip. Sometimes piglets and chickens were also chased away. While turning over the lagoon, the pilots saw wrecks at the bottom of the lagoon which was an incentive to dive. “Tourist” diving began in 1970. Since landing required touchdown on the first 500 feet of the short strip, pilots often funded passengers with extra flight and stories like:
“We see the Hoyo Maru – the wreck that made the mushroom”.
“Here is the two-masted Fujikawa maru”.
The lack of a back-up airport caused restrictions on the cargo taken (its weight) so sometimes passengers found out that their diving equipment was left on Guam, etc.
The jet age has brought mini-skiffs and divers to the islands in unison. This was, after all, the time of the Apollo program rocket fashion. In 1968, with the support of divers from Truk, the hydrographic ship USS Tanner mapped the wreck site. More than 30 wrecks have been located.
On May 26, 1969, the first text about diving on Truk appeared alongside an article in the Los Angeles Times about the Apollo crew’s landing – “Diving Paradise” was discovered and the text was written by Charles Hillinger. Then Hillinger got a call from Jacques Cousteau.
In July 1969, Cousteau and four colleagues landed on Truk. Over the course of eight weeks, the group made 480 dives on a total of 30 wrecks. Eighteen months later, on January 11, 1971, the documentary “Lagoon of Lost Ships” debuted on ABC television as part of the popular series “The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau.”
Articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the world of the Truk Lagoon wrecks was discovered for mankind or at least the diving part of mankind J
The hitherto forgotten Laguna Truk has slowly become an arrival point for many divers. A project has emerged to make the lagoon an underwater monument which would prevent looting of wrecks. Such a law was introduced on March 1, 1972. The penalty for breaking the law was six months of local imprisonment during which, according to local custom, the inmate had to take care of his own food – a real challenge for a tourist without a local family.
In 1972, two famous Italian underwater photographers Enrico Cappelleti and Gian Alberto Zaniletti came to Truk after signing a cooperation agreement. For four weeks, the Truk authorities provided them with a dive boat in exchange for copies of all the photos they took.
The book then goes on to describe more charter boats on this remote lagoon.
Dive Shop
The prince features beautiful dialogue between Ken Seybold and Kimiuo
“Why don’t you set up a Dive Shop?”
“And what is the Dive Shop?”
“You take a compressor, cylinders, diving equipment, a boat, bring people and take them on dives.”
And so Kimiuo founded the Dive Shop
Descriptions of the early days of tourist diving in Truk are descriptions of pioneering times.
This is how the Dive Shop “Blue Lagoon” was created. Micronesia’s first Dive Shop.
The Dive Shop’s operations were truly Micronesian and family-owned. Working for 25 years at Blue Lagoon, employee Kelep Souken was the son of Kimiuo’s fifth wife.
Now it is only slowly that the Blue Lagoon team has begun to make its certifications. There were some problems with this because the students preferred to pull out large shells of tasty Tridakn rather than blowing masks. It’s always better than hunting with dynamite what they also used to do.
Blue Lagoon’s subsequent years of operation have seen ups and downs. Loss of cylinders/compressor failures
Slowly, Kimiuo began buying land for the bungalows being created around Diveshop.
The story of Blue Lagoon shirts is beautiful. The first Dive Shop sign was copied from the book. Kimiuo simply copied it without caring completely about copyright. Fortunately, the author showed a sense of humor. This is the sign where the Aikoku Maru wreck has the Japanese flag in the background with not only the characteristic red sun but also the characteristic red rays. However, Japanese divers preferred a more peaceful logo on their shirts because they associated this flag with a period of very strong Japanese nationalism and conquest of other countries.
In 1989, the Dive Shop was taken over by Kimiuo’s son Gadvin Kimiuo, as Kimiuo himself was already experiencing health problems and had hung up his mask and fins.
The next part of the book consists of stories and articles by divers about Kimiuo.
Texts:
Paul Tzimoulis of Skina Diver Magazin 1970.
Chuck Nicklin Underwater photographer 1970’Enrics Cappelleti author of the guide La Laguna di Truk
Peter Wilson – the good spirit of Kimiuo.
Gene Hackman – Actor
And many others
The 1970s was a period when diving tourism in Truk was developing very rapidly, but at the same time a period of still such pioneering activities. Then, since the 1980s and 1990s, Truk has simply been a tourist destination for divers.
The 1990s were the years of tourism development in Truk. Truk is becoming a typical resort.
In 1998, Blue Lagoon Dive Shop celebrated its 25th anniversary.
You can also read how James Cameron visited Truk and Blue Lagoon Dive Shop.
The book is full of throwaway gems of the type:
“Kimiuo watched Titanic (movie) with his eighth wife – Missy”.
Kimiuo died of a heart attack on the way to the hospital. (January 4, 2001). He was buried on January 6, 2001, as a member of the Protestant Kinamwe Church in Kuchua (on a hill on the southeastern tip of Tonoas Island). He was buried by the pastor-father of Kumiuo Taeko’s seventh wife.
If you love wreck diving and want to go to Truk then this book “Witness to War” is a book about Truk and Kimiuo Aisek that is really worth reading.
