WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 -- The U.S. Navy submarine that struck and sank a Japanese training ship Friday off Honolulu was practicing an emergency ascent maneuver at the time of the incident, authorities said Saturday.
Adm. Tom Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in Hawaii said the maneuver, in which the ballast tanks are quickly emptied to send the vessel shooting towards the surface was "an operation that we do on a regular basis" for demonstration and to check the systems are operating properly.
The Japanese ship, the Ehime Maru, apparently sank quickly after the USS Greenville hit its bottom at about 1:45 p.m. local time.
Twenty six persons aboard the ship, used for training students in commercial fishing, were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy, but nine persons were still missing Saturday.
Navy and Coast Guard planes, helicopters and ships were scouring a 500-square-mile area from the accident scene, 9 to 10 miles south of Honolulu on Oahu island.
"With water temperatures of 77 degrees, there is a good chance that if someone was in the water for that amount of time (since the accident) they would still be alive," Coast Guard Petty Office Eric Hedaa said.
Survivors were taken to hospital for treatment.
Emergency rescue personnel said 12 were taken to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Moanalua and the Queen's Medical Center. Two were suffering from hypothermia, one from a broken collarbone and possible neck injury, and others with eye and ear irritation.
There were no official reports of damage to the Greeneville or injuries among its crew, but video shown on Japanese television reportedly showed long gashes on the nuclear submarine's side and a dent in its midsection.
President George W. Bush has sent an apology for the incident to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The Navy also expressed its regret, as did Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"We deeply regret this tragic incident," said a statement from the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which is based in Hawaii.
"Submarines have operating procedures to ensure the safety of such evolutions and a thorough investigation will be conducted into this incident."
Survivors told The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper that they felt a shudder, then saw quickly rising water after the Greeneville struck and sank their Japanese training vessel.
Hisao Onishi, captain of the 499-ton told Coast Guard officials that the Greeneville surfaced suddenly during a thunderstorm, according to Japan's Kyodo News service.
Speaking through an interpreter at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, 17-year-old Hiroyuki Hosokawa said he was below deck on the Ehime Maru when he felt two shocks. He said he walked out into a hallway where he could look down onto the bottom level, and he could already see that it was filled with diesel fuel.
He said he headed for the top deck, where he saw the submarine start to surface. Two or three minutes later, his ship sank, he said.
Other crew members told the newspaper they saw rushing water sweep one person from the deck. Crewmembers, soaked in diesel fuel, struggled off the ship and clung to six life rafts set adrift in 6- to 8-foot seas and waited for help.
Within minutes, they said, their ship was gone.
The Coast Guard dispatched rescue boats and aircraft and pulled 26 survivors from life rafts. They were taken to the Coast Guard Sand Island station. Twenty crew members, two instructors and 13 students were aboard the training ship. Among the missing are two engineers, two teachers, four students and one crewmember.
The boat left Honolulu Harbor's Pier 9 at about noon Friday and was said to be on its way back to Japan when the incident occurred.
Gabe Sage, a Coast Guard aviation survival technician, jumped from a helicopter into the water to assist in the rescue. He said the 26 survivors were in six rafts, three of them tied together. He said he could not see anyone in the water.
"Everyone was complaining about a lot of diesel fuel fumes in their eyes," he said. Some of them said many were in the engine room and they had to scramble out, Sage said.
Coast Guard Commander Dee Norton said the training ship, a three-deck 174-foot-long vessel, went down in water that is 18,000 feet deep.
The Ehime Maru had been in Hawaii since Tuesday with 13 students, plus teachers and crew.
A retired Navy captain, told CNN Television Saturday normal procedures for such drills call for a the deployment of a surface ship to be nearby to advise the submarine when there were no other vessels in the vicinity. Otherwise, the submarine would surface, check that the area in clear, then re-submerge and conduct the drill.
Independent verification of this, however, was not immediately available, and it was not clear what moves, if any, the submarine's crew took before blowing its tanks and heading for the surface.
The Japanese government has sent Yoshitaka Sakurada, state secretary of the Foreign Ministry, to the Japanese consulate in Hawaii to urge a quick probe of the incident. According to officials of the Japanese Defense Agency and defense experts, the cause of the incident might be revealed following an inspection of the submarine.
The Japanese vessel was owned by a regional government in Japan and was operated by the Iwajima Fishery High School in Ehime Prefecture, which was sending officials to Hawaii later Saturday.
