'We were still looking at where the sub went down,' continued Farrow, 'when we saw its periscope slowly push up above the surface. While still partially submerged it fired a torpedo from 200 yards. We could see the trail as it sped straight for the ship. It struck with a loud explosion.'

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On board Emidio, radioman Foote, who had quickly jury-rigged another antenna, was just preparing to send a second SOS when the torpedo hit. Undaunted by the blast, the dutiful wireless operator tapped out his SOS, added the words 'Torpedoed in the stern,' then calmly made his way to the main deck and jumped overboard.

The other men, oiler B.F. Moler, fireman Kenneth Kimes and 3rd engineer R.A. Winters–who had either ignored the order to abandon ship or were unaware of it–were still at their stations in the engine room when the torpedo struck. Astoundingly, Moler saw it penetrate the engine room bulkhead and pass so close to him that, as he told an examining medical officer the next day at the Eureka naval section base, 'I could have reached out and touched it. It exploded on the other side of the engine room and killed Kimes and Winters outright.' Despite three broken ribs and a punctured lung, Moler'somehow swam and climbed up to the upper deck and jumped overboard.' Both Moler and Foote were picked up by the lifeboats.

'Back came the planes as the sub sank out of sight again,' continued Farrow. 'One of them dropped another depth charge. There was a big blast and plenty of smoke. That may have hit her, we figured, for we didn't see her again.' Once again, however, the sub escaped damage. On February 23, 1942, I-17 would shell the Ellwood Oil Company refinery, 10 miles north of Santa Barbara–the first enemy shells to land on the continental United States in World War II.

Despite the torpedo hit, Emidio did not sink. Several days later, in fact, she ran aground on a pile of rocks off Crescent City, Calif., an amazing 85 miles north of where she had been torpedoed. The 31 survivors of the stricken ship rowed their lifeboats for 16 hours and 20 miles through a driving rainstorm until they were picked up by a Coast Guard lightship a few miles off Humbolt Bay.

About the time Emidio crewmen were beginning their agonizing 16-hour pull to safety, a second Japanese sub, I-23, had begun stalking another American tanker, Agwiworld, some 330 miles to the south, off Santa Cruz. At 2:15 p.m., as the 6,771-ton Richfield Oil Company tanker headed north some 20 miles off Monterey Bay, an explosion off the stern of the ship brought Captain Frederick Goncalves running to the bridge. About 500 yards to the west and directly in line with the sun, Goncalves could make out what appeared to be a submarine.

'I ordered the helm hard to port and headed straight for [it],' said the captain, 'but when the second shot came, I put the helm hard over the starboard and presented my stern to the sub.'

Although this sub, under the command of Captain Genichi Shibata, was much faster than Agwiworld, the Japanese faced a dilemma. The swells were heavy at the time, and Shibata knew that an attempt to overtake the fleeing American tanker with I-23's decks awash would affect his gun's accuracy and could even result in the loss of some gun crewmen.

Another reason the enemy sub did not close was probably that the Japanese had overheard the tanker's distress call to the U.S. Navy. Whatever the reasons, I-23 remained at 500 yards while firing at least a half-dozen more times at the now fishtailing American ship.

'The sub didn't chase us into port exactly,' Captain Goncalves later recalled. 'We zigzagged around, maneuvering always to present the smallest target possible. The sub circled and dodged, trying to get broadside of us, but never succeeded. As we neared land and the sub fired the last of its eight shots–four of which splashed water onto the deck–it quickly submerged.'

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