Page 208 - Micronesia

OKI MARU - The Hoki Maru was built in 1921, by William were made to operate her for voyage behind Aikoku up to Tokyo.
The Japanese being good engineers managed to operate the trou-
H Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton, Scotland as their first ship ble plagued ship and it was at Truk Lagoon that ill-fated Feb 16,
1944 when all hell was unleashed, and her big cargo of artificial
designed for diesel propulsion. Originally christened M/V Hauraki, aviation gas in forward hold was detonated by bombs from above.
named after New Zealand’s Hauraki Gulf it was under ownership
of the Union Steamship Corporation of New Zealand. Just prior to I t laid the entire midsection of the ship down on the sand in a
attack on Pearl Harbor, she was dispatched to Long Beach CA to huge eruption, folding the deck forward of the engine room
load two of the world’s first hydraulic blade bulldozers, designed right over top of the engine spaces. Then began a slow discharge
to be light enough to fit unified into a large aircraft instead of of the chemically produced aviation gas from many partially
always having to remove a heavy counter weighted blade for ripped drums that lasted for over next 47 years. The bubbles
shipment in two aircraft. John Deere Tractor Corpn had completed slowly rising would leave light skin burns and dissolve dive suit
these prototypes under a military contract and they were being seams. The aft section became a main attraction with so many in-
dispatched to Indonesia to help shore up Dutch defenses at many teresting pieces of hardware lying within the final No.5 hold. The
of their offshore islands… against a suspected move from Japan to two hydraulic dozers on the tween decks, an airport mule (tractor),
attack for the oil fuel needs then cut off by US embargo to Japan. and a row of Toyota trucks stowed neatly together side by side at
The ship sailed, never to be heard from again until well after war lower level.
end. Partway across the Pacific just after Pearl Harbor’s attack,
she broke down with first one and then two main engines failing.
While standing still and Japan now officially an Axis member at
war, she was approached by fully armed merchant cruiser, ‘Aikoku
Maru’ that fired several shots to gain a white flag of surrender A
boarding crew went over, and Hauaraki’s crew were locked away.
When the Scottish engineers finally got the ship running, they