The mystery and intrigue surrounding the missing crew of the Japanese midget submersible and their postattack steps are carefully retraced by expatriate historian, Associate Professor Kojihiro Matsuda*.

  As my colleagues and I think, the crew did not die but abandoned their sinking midget submersible by jumping-off and going ashore at the Collaroy Basin. The damaged midget M-24 drifted on, empty, and sank quietly off Bungan Head.  It was still dark, on the south end of Fisherman’s Beach, as Ban and Ashibe brushed the soft northern beaches sand from their feet and put their highly unpopular polyester socks and rubbersoled, lace-up, special submariners’ shoes back on. They easily skirted the tank traps that had been laid along the beach, laughing quietly, because as far as they knew; no tank-landing was being considered.
  Smoking a navy-issue cigarette he had kept dry in a cellulose acetate drybag, superior officer Ban made the decision to proceed north by land to the end of the peninsular, confident that they would be able to signal the mother sub from the headland for a belated pickup.
  Reaching the narrow sandy strip behind Collaroy Beach which ran beside the recently upgraded Pittwater Road, they saw on the other side of the road what they thought was a concrete bunker. It was in fact the local cinema, with The Wizard of Oz spelt out in belatedly dimmed incandescent bulbs.  Wooden power poles and weatherboard houses lined both sides of the un-kerbed but upgraded road.
  As they wandered North they saw a military radar station in complete darkness, its radar antenna motionless.
  All was quiet except for some earlyrising roosters on a nearby chook farm and to the north a few still undimmed streetlights pinpointed the small settlement at Narrabeen.
  Despite the setback of the previous evening, the well-indoctrinated sailors would have remained supremely confident of a victory for their Emperor, and walking past the Collaroy Army Camp they would have probably talked openly of the things needed doing when that victory had been achieved.
  Ashibe would, we think, have wanted to extend his commission and come back down to Australia to work with the Occupying Forces … changing street signs, setting up a workable new syllabus in schools, changeover to a new currency, introducing a universal language, and generally getting the population of Australia used to a strictly enforced new way of doing things.  A special effort would be needed to get the post-victory economy going, with new factories and much new housing to be built. Even in the dark, from a quick glance around this under-populated windswept, seaside prefecture, the large scale of the undertaking was clear.
  The severe floods of March 1942 had long since subsided and as the sand was dry when they crossed the Narrabeen lagoon entrance at low tide, they left their shoes on, and boldly entered the Lakeside Caravan Park. In summer this park overflowed with the tents and caravans of a thousand or more holidaying families but now, on the first day of winter, it was empty apart from a half-dozen rows of de-wheeled plywood caravans sitting on little piles of now scarce house bricks.
  We believe Ashibe broke into one of these caravans using his navy-issue knife to gouge out four small screws which attached a hardware-store lock to the plywood door.
  They apparently searched the cramped caravan and found stowed under the bunks blankets, Hawaiian shirts, shorts, sandals and other summer clothing left by the owners.
  They found only western-style cutlery in the drawer under the sink, and in a tiny cubicle … a sit-on, marine toilet that, to their relief, worked if pumped hard enough.
  It is believed that they looked through summer holiday snaps left by the family, and helped themselves to three longneck brown bottles of Dinner Ale they found in a carton, knocking the caps off on the edge of the mottled green formica table and drinking the strong beer straight from the bottle.
  Around 7am, after an un-refreshing short sleep, Ban woke and got dressed in some of the loose-fitting summer clothes they’d found, took a fistful of change from a jam tin near the door, and went outside the caravan for a reconnoitre.
  North Narrabeen Newsagent and Army-Reservist Alan Dempsey says he remembers Ban coming into his shop as he was putting gold and silvertopped milk bottles into the ice-box and listening to news of the previous night’s surprise attack, on the AWA deep-bass valve radio.
  “He looked ridiculous … this little five-foot-six joker in aviator sunglasses, an over-sized shortsleeve Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, and sandals; and an Akubra that seemed to sit right up on top of his head,” Dempsey said.
  Mr Dempsey said he had to turn down the radio to hear what the softly-spoken stranger was saying …
  “But he wasn’t saying anything that I could understand, so I turned the radio back up to listen to the rest of the news about the excitement of the previous night.
  “Ban chose a few basic food items, and paid me with a handful of coins. I took out what he owed me and gave the rest back.  Then he left the shop.”
  After Ban and Ashibe had enjoyed a part Japanese, part Australian style breakfast which included toast, and tea with milk, they studied the inaccurate map supplied as part of their information and survival kit. The map was a joke … even to the untrained eye many place names had been poorly translated and the copies of Herald photographs of Sydney Harbour were of little use to them up on the northern beaches.
  Around 8am, the two survivors left the relative safety of the caravan and headed-off towards Mona Vale on two rusty, Malvern Star bikes they’d found under a neighbouring caravan.
  From the driveway of a substantial two storey weatherboard house up on the Turimetta Slopes, they stole a big black two-door Buick convertible. Fortunately the keys had been left in the ignition.
  Accustomed to the left side of the road, they motored tentatively northward in the big imported vehicle. After crossing a grassy flat valley sparsely dotted with eucalypts and shown incorrectly on the map as Wallie Wood, they crested the small rise leading to the long gentle slope down to the Mona Vale shops.
  Halfway down the hill they were seen by a man sitting on a bullock cart outside Shaw’s landscaping supplies. He observed the stolen vehicle, but showed no sign of alarm and said nothing to police.
  My colleagues and I are convinced that they parked the car at Palm Beach and continued on foot to Barrenjoey Head.
  The carved Japanese-characters found in a sandstone cave beside the track in 1966 would indicate that they passed this way as they climbed up to the lighthouse. We are almost certain they used a rear-vision mirror ripped from the Buick to flash a signal hoping someone aboard the mother sub would see it and effect a rescue.
  Had the mother sub still been out there, it’s possible the flashes from Ban’s mirror would have been seen, but both Ban and Ashibe would have had trouble seeing any reply as the early morning winter sun was low in the sky and shining right in their eyes.
  In fact, we think that the mother sub had already departed to exact more chaos along the coast by lobbing mostly dud shells into various seaside prefectures.
  Later that morning a privately-owned 26ft, doublediagonal NZ Kauri-planked, luxury Halvorsen cabin-cruiser taken from its moorings at Snapperman Beach was spotted by Coastal Defence Officer Peter Muddle, rounding Shark Point and heading seaward.
  So it would appear that Ban and Ashibe had stolen yet again in their hopeless effort to be rescued. Muddle had been fishing since dawn aboard Sylvray, his 25ft spotted-gum, carvel-planked, hard-chine launch.
  The Halvorsen was seen returning just after 2pm, by Ettalong Ferry Deckhand and Navy Reservist David Rudder.
  “I was gob-smacked to see it turn suddenly to port and run up onto Barranjoey Beach, near the wharf, with the side-valve Chevy 6 motor still racing and the three-bladed bronze-alloy propeller thrashing dangerously,” Mr Rudder said.
  We think the two occupants were Ban and Ashibe coming back from their second unsuccessful rendezvous attempt.
  The convertible Buick, owned by Chief Justice Malcolm Gray, was later recovered from beside Whale Beach Road.
  The tank was empty and the keys still in the ignition. There was no visible damage apart from the missing rear-vision mirror, and some tearing to the grey felt roof lining where the mirror had been ripped-out.
  My guess is that Ban and Ashibe waited some time for a 190 bus on Barrenjoey Road near the Surf Road intersection at Whale Beach. On the same bus was David Rudder going to Navy Reserve training who remembers them sitting upstairs in the back seat of the Albion double-decker, and then getting-off at Lake Park Road, North Narrabeen, just a short walk away from the Lakeside Caravan Park.
  With an easy passage back to Japan now extremely unlikely, I think they may have lived on the Northern Beaches for some time, keeping to themselves at first and then slowly but surely assimilating into the northern beaches community.
  Mr ‘Blowfly’ and Mr ‘Maggot’, reliable veteran members of North Narrabeen Surf Club, yarned to me about the two young foreign men who, although not club members, surfed there from dawn to dusk throughout the hot summer weekends of 1942/43, on the long wooden Duke Kahanamoku boards of the day.
  We think Ashibe took a job as green-keeper at Long Reef Golf Course, and on the sweltering hot summer afternoons after work, regularly collected shellfish and seaweed from the rock platform before taking a bus home to the Caravan Park, and having a dip in the lagoon before preparing dinner which, more often than not, weather-permitting, was a barbeque using the Park’s very basic but adequate 1940s facilities.
  Ban, we believe, worked first as waiter in the Avalon Café, serving the locally renowned home-made pies, sausagerolls, and pasties, before opening his own wine-and-dine restaurant in Newport, which proved to be very popular although expensive. The original building was demolished in the fifties but Council and Rotary Club records attest to this fact.
  The urge to get back to Japan would have subsided with time, and frankly I think they would have quite enjoyed living here. Immediately after the war, when they could easily have gone back home by passenger ship or on any one of a number of Qantas commercial flights, we found no record of them doing so.
  It is more than possible they stayed on in Australia and never went back to Japan, except perhaps some years later on a holiday or business trip. It’s also possible they married Australian girls and raised families here but my research has not identified any Ban or Ashibe descendants.