"Superlatives are meaningless. Truk is the Wreck Diver's Mecca."
My dad, Peter Mitchell, is also a life long scuba diver, and a bit of an expert about shipwrecks around Plymouth, England, which used to be one of the most important ports in the world. He's dived on most of them and written a couple of books about them too - The Wreckers Guide To South West Devon, Parts One and Two.
But my dad has also travelled the world diving on shipwrecks and for him, getting to go to Truk Lagoon a few years ago was a dream come true. From Plymouth to Truk is an incredibly long journey, but within Truk Lagoon lies over 50 Japanese warships, sunk by the Americans at the end of the World War II in a grim payback for Pearl Harbour.
The Truk Islands were a near atoll of twelve volcanic islands inside a huge lagoon fifty miles long by thirty miles wide. This was Japan's second most important base outside its homeland and was home to the Combined Fleet and strategically used as a supply base on the 17 Feb 1944 operation Hailstorm was launched. At last revenge for Pearl Harbor was at hand. 450 planes bombed, strafed, and torpedoed the lagoon and its islands for two days. Over fifty ships were sunk and 270 planes destroyed. oil storage tanks were set ablaze, the runways, workshops and barracks severely damaged. Close to eight thousand people were killed or injured. It was Pearl Harbor in spades and the end of Japan as a sea power.
Today the islands live on their past history. A population of thirty two thousand ekes out a poor living growing coconuts and servicing the thriving tourist industry. For all that its development is slow, it is still an idyllic tropical island and its people are very friendly. Without the treasure of its wrecks it would have been long forgotten Cheaper air fares and mass tourism may still ruin the islands, but the undersea areas are treated as a mass war grave and very well protected.
Apart from Scapa Flow in England, there is nowhere on earth that you can see this amount of shipwrecks in such a total state of completeness. The wrecks have been rusting quietly for fifty years now, and in fifty more years, they will have collapsed and become meaningless piles of scrap. If you want to see the eighth wonder of the world, go now, later will be too late.
This is just part of my dad's comprehensive report of diving on Truk Lagoon, covering the history as well as the wreck dives themselves of several of these ships - U.S.S.Arizona, Fujikawa Maru, Betty Bomber, Nippon Maru, Rio De Janeiro, Hoki Maru, Fumazuki and Kimio Aisak.
Diving on ships that are war graves may seem grisly to some - tasteless, even - but those who dive here will surely come away not only with the memory of some unforgettable dives but also with the unavoidably sombre memories of what happens during war.
You can read his complete report on Scuba Diving Truk Lagoon at his wreck diving website Submerged.co.uk.
My dad's hoping to go back to Truk Lagoon for his 60th birthday in a couple of years - fingers crossed he gets to go and, this time, I get to go with him!
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