DEEP SECRET: Is there a sunken Japanese sub from WWII off the coast?

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 09/26/2002 | Carl Nolte

[Pokey78]

It was a great morning for sea stories Wednesday, and Bill Anderson, a World War II veteran with an eye toward history and an obsession with sunken submarines, had a good one.

"We think we found a Japanese submarine," he said, standing on the deck of his weathered sub hunting boat, the Echo Hunter, at the Pillar Point Marina in Half Moon Bay.

[1Old Pro]

the hulk of a big, powerful Japanese sub sent on a desperate mission to destroy San Francisco in the last days of World War II.

Hmmm, I wonder why they were interested in San Francisco rather than a really important target like Newport Beach or Malibu. Like anyone would even notice an attack on San Francisco.

[Redbob]

"Also true ... I don't think that, in our real history, that we should have stopped when we did. Particularly, one of the initial targets should have been Tokyo."

We'd have been doing them a favor: Hiroshima today is the only modern, well-laid-out city I saw in Japan, due no doubt to recent nuclear "urban renewal".

[daviddennis]

I don't think Newport Beach or Malibu were on people's radar screens back in 1945.

I seem to remember that waterfront homes on Lido Island in Newport Beach were selling for $5,000 in 1955.

Now those same homes would sell for $3.5 million, minimum.

D

[cinFLA]

don't think we would have stopped at dropping only two of the big bombs on them.

And just how many bombs do you think we had?