Japanese Submarines Are May Meeting Topic

The next meeting of the New Jersey World War II Book Club will be on Tuesday, May 19,  at the Millburn Library, at 7 p.m.

Our speaker will be Bruce Tucker who will present a lecture, slides and some video on the Japanese Super Submarine (I-400 class) and Japan’s plan to use these submarines to alter the course of World War II. While there were a number of significant secret weapons developed during World War II such as jet aircraft like the ME-262 and missiles like the V-1 and V-2, one of the most secret and potentially most terrorizing of them all was a gigantic 400 foot long submarine that could travel 1 and 1/2 times around the world undetected and then surface briefly off the coast of a major US city like NY or Washington and launch a surprise attack. Although these monster Japanese submarines were never actually used as they were intended, and all traces of them disappeared shortly after the end of the war, they did manage to inspire the post war/cold war navy’s of the world with some of their astounding technologies. Two of their submerged wrecks, I-400 and I-401 were only recently discovered by divers in 2005 and 2013 off the coast of Hawaii. They now help to tell the rest of their story and why they were quickly disposed of by the US Navy in 1946.

 Bruce Tucker has taught history at Rutgers University School of Continuing Education Osher Life Long Learning Program and was recently awarded the 2015 Marlene M. Pomper OLLI-RU Teaching Award. Bruce also lectures and presents living history at various libraries, senior centers, community centers and public schools in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York City. He is a graduate of the City University of New York and The Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. He lectured to us back in November, 2013 on Operation Catapult, the destruction of the French Navy during the fall of France in the summer of 1940, and was warmly received.