So many warships sank in the waters around Guadalcanal Island that the area was nicknamed Ironbottom Sound.
101-year-old Masao Araki was involved in the naval battles in those waters.
He said that he is very grateful that there are people who are still conducting searches in Iriomote, Kagoshima Prefecture, where he lives.
Deep into the night of August 8, 1942, Araki was on the bridge of the destroyer Yunagi, which brought up the rear of a fleet of eight Imperial Japanese Navy ships, including a heavy cruiser. The vessels slowly drew closer to Guadalcanal. Stretched out before his eyes was the luminescence of noctilucas in the sea under a starry sky.
Araki was only 20 years old at the time, waited with bated breath as the Battle of Savo Island was about to begin.
The silence was broken as the fleet launched its night attack on Allied warships. Under the illumination of the searchlights and flares of the Japanese military, the silhouettes of about a dozen Allied ships stood out in the darkness.
On Allied ships, he was on, with tracer bullets from machine guns on Allied ships. The crew of the Yunagi immediately got ready to fire a torpedo.
Araki called out readings on a compass and reported the direction of the target enemy vessel to his superior. At that moment he thought he heard his mother Ichi's voice close to his earlobe, saying, Masao, don't die ever. He instinctively stopped moving, only to be roused to action by the angry voice of his superior.
A torpedo was fired on the side of the enemy ship, creating a 10 meter column of water. He wanted to shoot quickly and pull out of here quickly, and everything he could think about was all he could think about. The Yunagi reversed course and increased speed to get away from the island because there was the fear that the fleet could be attacked by U.S. military aircraft at dawn. He was stricken with fear until the Yunagi sailed out of the enemy's range.
The Japanese forces sank four U.S. and Australian naval vessels in a naval battle. But Araki didn't know until the war ended that Japanese naval vessels were sunk one after another near Guadalcanal, while soldiers on the island starved to death.
Araki can always forget what a soldier said in a voice filled with regret to the wounded comrades left behind on the island: We will come fetch you without fail. Today, Araki no longer has any fellow soldiers to share the memories of the war with him.
As the memory of the war fades, discovering those sunken ships and soldiers belongings at the bottom of the sea will provide an opportunity for people to reconsider the tragedy of a war, Araki said.