Imagine driving west on Route 66 through Tijeras Canyon and having to pull over to make way
for a Japanese submarine heading straight toward you. It happened! To understand this strange encounter on the road, let’s step back about 75 years in time.
Very early on December 7, 1941, about 10 miles off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki and Petty Officer Kiyoshi Inagaki squeezed through midget submarine HA-19’s 15- inch conning tower hatch. The mini-sub detached from the aft deck of its mother ship (submarine I-24) and slipped beneath the surface. Sakamaki’s attack orders specified carriers, battleships and cruisers as targets during the lull between Japan’s two aerial assaults on Pearl Harbor. But the submarine failed in its mission by running aground on a reef just outside the harbor entrance.
Scuttling efforts also failed. Inagaki drowned and Sakamaki became the very first Japanese prisoner of war. The ill-fated submarine was salvaged, shipped to the mainland and became the star attraction in nationwide war bond parades.
The 47-ton, 78-foot war prize arrived at the shipyard in Vallejo, California in January 1942. The U.S. Treasury Department’s war bond tour was launched that October and cruised through New
Mexico three months later. The sub – 90 feet long, from front grill to propellers – was hauled by a special tractor-trailer rig. It entered New Mexico on Highway 80 from Arizona and made port calls in Lordsburg, Deming and Las Cruces (including a round trip to El Paso), then cruised north on Highway 85 to Hatch, Hot Springs (now Truth or Consequences), Socorro, Belen and finally dropped anchor in Albuquerque on January 14, 1943. By mid-morning, an estimated 20,000 public-spirited citizens lined Central Avenue for the biggest parade ever staged in the city. The captured submarine inspired local residents and visitors from nearby towns to buy war bonds and stamps – $175,000 worth.
With some trepidation, the driver was faced
with a real challenge to reach the next tour stop on the east side of the mountains – Buford, now part of Moriarty. Back then, Deadman’s Curve in Tijeras Canyon was also a hill with a sharp drop on the east side. Could a 90-foot tractor trailer rig make the turn? Was the situation any different than the many military convoys transiting Tijeras Canyon at the time? On the tour in northern California, the 1940s-style “big rig” negotiated hairpin turns and surmounted steep grades without needing its lowest gear. As it turns out, the two-lane highway around Deadman’s Curve was easily handled as the submarine followed Route 66 east through the canyon and through the ranching community of Edgewood.
Imagine the shock and awe of those who had to make way for the captured Japanese submarine – a submarine whose only mission was to sink U.S. warships moored in Pearl Harbor. Onewonders if there were cheers, or perhaps boos and hisses, which football spectators had reservedfor the sub when it made a special appearance in the Los Angeles Coliseum earlier in the nationwide tour.
Imagine also the excitement of Tijeras villagers who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. An observant resident might have noticed the bent propeller blade that resulted from striking a parked vehicle, weeks earlier, while making a wide turn on a city street.
The rig pulled off Route 66 in Buford. It was a Friday afternoon, the end of a busy work week, and the sub attracted many onlookers. Several Estancia businesses closed early so employees could visit the submarine on display. A set of steps and catwalks were rigged out so that area residents could climb up to glass windows that were cut into the submarine hull during its Vallejo shipyard refit. This alteration allowed everyone a chance to peer into the submarine’s cramped interior, which included two life-size dummies!
After its scheduled stop in Buford, the sub continued east on Highway 66, then turned onto Highway 285, heading southeast for scheduled stops in Roswell, Artesia and Carlsbad, before exiting the state and setting a course for Pecos, Texas.
World War II was still raging and Americans needed something more to cheer about, even after her decisive naval victory at the Battle of Midway seven months earlier. The war bond campaign
helped raise spirits – and funds – to partially avenge the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
Editor’s Note: If anyone has additional information about this unusual transit through Tijeras Canyon in mid-January 1943, please contact the author at dbrown779@aol.com. Check your old
family albums and scrapbooks: Any photos? Eye-witness reports? News clippings? This submarine report is one of the stories we’ve scheduled for inclusion in the book EMHS is working on, inspired by the research done for “Mapping Our Vanishing Past.”
