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It was one of the most dramatic and defining moments of a world at war. American fighter aircraft relentlessly strafing and bombing Japan’s naval stronghold in the western Pacific. When it was over – and it was over in a relative flash – 200 thousand tonnes of Japan’s mightiest sea power sat motionless on the bottom of what had been strategic bastion. 1000 Japanese personnel were killed. The lagoon floor was transformed into a macabre and haunting graveyard of ships, aircraft, trucks and tanks.

Over time and as the horrors of war receded into history it became a must see for scuba divers the world over. A dreadful battleground became an undersea wonderland and the tourist traffic became a vital economic fillip for the islanders of who call Chuuk (formerly known as Truk) - a tiny smattering of Micronesia - home.

Now, though, epic disaster threatens again. Within the rapidly rusting and deteriorating hulks lurk tonnes upon tonnes of thick black oil. It’s estimated there may be tens of millions of litres down there and according to some of the world’s best scientific know-how, it’s likely to be disgorged in the next few years. Or even sooner should a storm fierce enough crack the fragile steel shells.

“To compare the Exxon Valdez with the wrecks in Chuuk Lagoon is not stretching the bow too far because the Exxon Valdez was basically out in an open ocean environment or estuary area, Chuuk Lagoon is a coral reef system and to have the sudden release of thousands of tonnes of toxic oil sludge on these pristine shores would be utterly devastating and would ruin the whole island’s economy for generations to come.” IAN McLEOD  CORROSION EXPERT, WA MUSEUM

Breaking this important environmental story for Foreign Correspondent, North Asia Correspondent Mark Willacy travels to Chuuk with bureau cameraman Jun Matsuzono and underwater filming specialist Matt Guest to expose the scale and imminence of the threat and the total lack of action to prevent the disaster.

“I think it will kill most of everything, because it can spread around the lagoon and kill things living on the shore, kill anything under the ocean, I think it kill everything. I think my heart will be broken. I think my heart will be devastated.” GRADVIN AISEK Chuuk dive-master

Even Japanese veterans of the attack believe action needs to be taken, particularly by their own government. But Japan is dealing with the massive impact of last month’s earthquake and tsunami and a solution is certainly beyond the economic wherewithal of the Chuuk administration. Perhaps there’s a commercial solution? Enter laconic Queensland salvage expert Tony Turner to investigate the potential of a procedure known as ‘hot-tapping’.

Tropical idyll views

Music

00:00

WILLACY: It’s thousands of kilometres out in the middle of the vast blue dish that is the Pacific. Isolation has preserved a languid way of life here where everything revolves around the rhythm and bounty of the sea.

00:14

Diving boat in lagoon

GRADVIN AISEK: “There is no comparison to this place. This place is unique. When I come back

00:31

Gradvin

here I say I am in paradise again”.

00:38

Aerial. Chuuk Lagoon

WILLACY: Within what is a huge atoll, Chuuk Lagoon is a diver’s paradise, strikingly beautiful above the waves and hauntingly beautiful below,

00:44

Gradvin prepares for dive

and no-one knows its secrets better than legendary diver Gradvin Aisek.

00:55

Under water shots/Gradvin diving

Music

01:05

GRADVIN AISEK: “I’ve been diving 30-some years and every day I dove the ships and I really enjoy seeing the coral, the marine life.

01:09

Gradvin

It’s really sparkling in my brain”.

01:19

Under water shots. Fish

Music

01:23

WILLACY: It feels as clear and picture perfect as a giant glass fish tank. Thousands of species of fish and coral everywhere –

01:27

Wreck on seabed

but there are other spectres that reveal themselves as we descend. All from another world and another time.

01:35

Gradvin at wreck

GRADVIN AISEK: “First time I dove the ship I have a fear because I’m thinking about seeing a ghost on the ship. But when I dive a lot I really enjoy going inside. It’s just absolutely beautiful.... fantastic”.

01:51

Music

02:09

Sea life on wreck/human skulls on wreck

WILLACY: The people of Micronesia have a saying, what the tide washes ashore it will one day take away and here the tides wash over both the metal and human skeletons of a massive nautical graveyard.

02:17

Metal on wreck/ Truck on seabed/ Japanese wreck

This lagoon of lost ships is a time capsule of a brutal battle, which helped turn the Pacific during World War II. But history has come full circle. What America’s bombs despatched to the ocean floor over half a century ago, have transformed and amalgamated into one enormous ticking time bomb. These oily pebbled-sized blobs offer a clue, but so far no-one has the answer for what’s quickly shaping as an environmental disaster.

02:37

Beneath these waters are about 60 Japanese wrecks. They were based here because the Japanese thought this place was impenetrable. But then, over two days in February 1944, wave after wave of American bombers struck, sinking 200,000 tonnes of shipping. In terms of tonnage, it was the biggest mass sinking of World War II”.

03:16

Archival. Wartime footage

WARTIME NARRATOR: “These are waters long considered impregnable by the Japanese. Enemy planes come up in a desperate effort to protect their vital base. The gunners throw up a curtain of flak and enemy war planes are shot flaming into the sea”.

03:45

WILLACY: Back then it was known as Truk and it was considered the Gibraltar of the Pacific, a perfect natural fortress, a mid-ocean lagoon inside a protective coral ring with just five easily defendable passes.

04:03

WARTIME NARRATOR: “Now American carrier based planes go aloft…”

WILLACY: But Operation Hailstone, deep into enemy waters, would smash and sink the most formidable stronghold of the Japanese combined fleet.

04:17

WARTIME NARRATOR:  “Striking again and again, American forces hammer at Truk 22 times within five days”.

04:29

KIYOO SATO: “Truk was Pearl Harbor for the Japanese Navy. I felt it was revenge by the United States.

04:38

Kiyoo Sato

Among the battles I experienced for two years and nine months in the Pacific, it was the biggest”.

04:49

Archival. Wartime footage

TOSHIO NAKAMURA: “A bomb and a torpedo hit the back of the ship and the bridge was in flames.

05:03

Toshio Nakamura shows hands

Because I was standing in flames, all the skin here… (showing his hand) all the skin on my face was peeled off and hanging down. My ears were burnt from both sides, and became like this”.

05:14

ECU Nakamura and Sato

Music

05:28

WILLACY: Chief Navigator Sato and Second Lieutenant Nakamura somehow survived the 1200 bombing sorties by US fighter planes –

05:34

Archival. Wartime footage

each wave stronger than the Japanese strikes at Pearl Harbor.

TOSHIO NAKAMURA: “We were hit by the second wave of attacks, and our ship sank.

05:43

Nakamura

We could see sharks swimming, but if we did not jump into the sea we’d have been sucked down with the ship”.

05:55

Archival. Wartime footage

KIYOO SATA: “The US pilots were brave. The strafing by machine guns and dive bombers raised my hair.

06:06

Sata

I was commanding our machine guns at the centre of the ship and the track of enemy’s guns kept coming closer to me.

06:24

Archival. Wartime footage

I lost five friends who were on board the ships”.

06:34

Wrecks on seabed

WILLACY: And so an unassailable strategic fortress became, in 48 hours, a submerged scrap yard of warships and freighters, warplanes, tanks and trucks – and a tomb for thousands of Japanese. Over time and as the stark horror of that epic battle and tragic loss gradually subsided, Truk lagoon became a must see for war historians and recreational divers alike. It earned a reputation as the best collection of shipwrecks to dive anywhere in the world.

06:41

Now though, Chuuk’s tourism drawcard is more a toxic tragedy waiting to happen.

07:20

Oil blobs floating to surface

The enormous tanks and holds of these wrecks are about to give up their grimy, destructive contents.

IAN MCLEOD: “The issue of the time bomb is essentially the trapped oil. To compare

07:26

McLeod

the Exxon Valdez with the risk in Chuuk Lagoon is not stretching the bow too far because the Exxon Valdez was basically out in an open ocean environment or in an estuary area, Chuuk Lagoon is a coral reef system

07:46

Chuuk Lagoon

and to have the release, the sudden release of thousands of tonnes of toxic oil sludge onto these pristine shores would be utterly devastating and would ruin the whole island’s economy for generations to come”.

08:03

Diver at wreck

WILLACY: Rusting silently among the wrecks of Chuuk Lagoon, these three massive Japanese tankers could be holding up to 32 million litres of oil. And already they’re slowly bleeding.

08:24

Oil blobs rising

WESLEY SIMINA: “We have about three tankers, that’s over several million gallons of oil capacity, so

08:38

Simina. Super:
WESLEY SIMINA
Governor, Chuuk State

imagine if one of them you know, kind of just split open and all the oil gushing out”.

08:47

Oil blobs rising

IAN MCLEOD: “The volume of oil spread out like that in the coral lagoon would have a totally devastating effect on the environment. It would be

08:53

McLeod

worse than the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill”.

09:07

Wreckage on surface

WILLACY: Despite the growing knowledge and the warnings, so far there’s no plan in place to deal with this unfolding drama.

09:12

Turner on boat

But is it a job for governments or privateers like Tony Turner who’s worked for every major oil company on the planet – including BP.

09:21

He’s come to Chuuk Lagoon to see if this unique ecosystem can be saved, and if there’s some money to be made from recovering the oil from inside the tankers.

09:37

Turner dives

TONY TURNER: “You could refine it. When you pump the oil out of the ground it’s not perfect, it comes up with sand. Some of them come up with a large water cut.

09:49

Turner

They send them to refineries and they come out with regular oil, so no different.”

09:57

Turner on wreck of Fujikawa Maru

Music

10:04

WILLACY: Today Tony Turner is inspecting the Fujikawa Maru, a 130 metre long Japanese freighter which was carrying zero fighter planes when it was sunk by a US torpedo. Now sitting upright on the bottom, the Fujikawa is encrusted with coral. Her guns are rusted and silent and like the other wrecks, the Fujikawa is slowly breaking up.

10:12

“Is there any idea in your head how much oil that thing potentially could be holding?”

10:50

Turner in water at dive boat

TONY TURNER: “Well it’s hard to say you know… hundreds of thousands of gallons.

10:54

Turner on dive

If it does leak it’s just like a glue. It’ll get into the mangroves and it’ll be hard to get out”.

11:01

WILLACY: Scientists around the world too believe these ships are on the verge of rupturing and spilling their toxic cargo. Corrosion, boat anchors, typhoons and dynamite fishing are all weakening the wrecks. Ian McLeod is the world’s leading expert on underwater corrosion. In 2002 he assessed the Chuuk wrecks and concluded they’d begin breaking up within 10 to 15 years – in other words from about now.

11:11

IAN MCLEOD: “The tankers are losing their mechanical strength and if you get a typhoon coming through, even at depths of 30, 40, 50 metres, the wave action can be intense and so if a vessel has been lying there quite happily for 60, 65 years, the waves can literally tear the wreck apart and

11:43

McLeod

one moment you can be living in a pristine marine environment and the next morning, after the typhoon, you could have black oily sludge devastating your beaches”.

12:06

Wrecks

WILLACY: The big question is how to get the oil out of the wrecks. There aren’t a lot of options and the one that looks most effective is a process called hot tapping. It’s also very expensive.

IAN MCLEOD: “The problem for Chuuk is it’s a poor country and what they need is a

12:20

McLeod

team of experts to come in who are specialists in preservation of shipwrecks and also in hot tapping the oil out of shipwrecks.

12:42

Turner at wreck

That’s when you go and drill holes in the vessels and you put in a steam lance and you basically warm the oil up to the point where it’s mobile and then you suck it out”.

12:53

TONY TURNER: “By doing it with hot tapping it’s like keyhole surgery on your knee or something. It’s not a major incision, it’s just a small hole here, a small hole here

13:08

Turner

and you’re averting a monumental disaster”.

13:17

Chuuk general views

Music

13:22

WILLACY: But this keyhole surgery comes with a multi-million dollar cost, one that impoverished Chuuk state could never afford. Home to about 57,000 people this Micronesian state could not survive without overseas aid and the trickle of tourist dollars from visiting divers.

13:25

The unemployment rate here is estimated at about 40% and many young people spend their days doing little more than smoking marijuana and hanging out on the street.

13:48

Simina and Willacy on bus

Wesley Simina is the Governor of Chuuk and he’s trying to turn the place around and his top priority is fixing Chuuk’s appalling roads.

14:02

Cars through flooded potholes

Chuuk can’t even afford to pump the water out of its potholes, let alone pay for pumping the oil out of its wrecks and beyond the cost, there’s another major problem for any clean up operation.

14:22

Wreckage in lagoon

Technically, these ships are a Japanese war grave – meaning they can’t be touched without permission from Tokyo. The Governor thinks both the Japanese and the Americans have a duty to prevent an environmental disaster.

14:35

Dive boat in lagoon

WESLEY SIMINA: “I don’t know maybe there are legal issues, there are political issues, I’m not quite sure about that, but from

14:51

Simina. Super:
WESLEY SIMINA
Governor, Chuuk State

our perspective I believe it is both governments’ moral as well as legal obligation to do so, to help us out cleaning up this oil situation in our wrecks”.

14:57

Human skull on wreck

WILLACY: Japan is of course mired in a major environmental and humanitarian catastrophe at home, but Truk survivors we spoke to believe responsibilities remain.

TOSHIO NAKAMURA : “Even though I believe it’s a grave we should get rid of the oil.

15:09

Nakamura

We must clean up everything that threatens to harm mankind. It’s our duty”.

15:32

WILLACY: And so once again Chuuk finds itself beholden to outside forces.

15:40

Gradvin and Willacy walk through bush

This place has long been a slave to its colonial masters. It’s said the Spanish brought Christianity, the Germans commerce and the Japanese war. I’m being taken to see more of the enduring scars of Japan’s presence here by Gradvin Aisek, the Chuukese diver whose father witnessed the battle in 1944.

15:47

To get to where we’re going, we have to hack our way through thick vegetation. 

16:13

Japanese fortification on Tonowas

The island of Tonowas was the Japanese headquarters of the combined fleet. From this atoll, the Imperial Army had a powerful offensive base, which it used to strike at Allied forces in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

16:18

Gradvin shows fortifications

GRADVIN AISEK: “Well here we see one of the Japanese guns sitting on the top of the hill of Tonowas Island. They are very, very well dug in”.

WILLACY: “And what does your late father, what did he remember about the attack?

16:39

Willacy and Gradvin

How bad was it?”

GRADVIN AISEK: “Well according to my dad he said he never had fear before... when he was born and raised he never have any fear, but when the Americans came and bombed the island of Truk, that’s the first time he ever feel the fear of his life”.

16:52

WILLACY: For the islanders, life under Japanese rule could be brutal. After the US bombing attack of early 1944, Chuuk would be by-passed, the survivors left to starve and rot.

17:12

Lucas Menchuk

Eighty-four year old Lucas Menchuk remembers how desperate some of the Japanese became.

17:30

LUCAS MENCHUK: “Yes, I heard the story that the Japanese.

17:37

They killed one of two islanders to taste because if the war continued they had to survive on human beings”.

17:43

Menis Lion

WILLACY: Others, like village chief Menis Lion, remember another terrible side to the aftermath of the battle – a sea of oil.

17:59

Chuuk Lagoon

MENIS LION: “I remember after the bombing I saw a lot of oil spilled in the lagoon. And it kills everything. It took them months to clear the oil out. No-one could go fishing because the ocean was covered in oil.

18:12

Menis Lion

I heard that oil is still coming out of the wrecks. What is going to happen to our beautiful lagoon? It’s some sixty years since the end of the war.”

18:35

Underwater sea life

WILLACY: Just as it was when Menis Lion was a boy, so it is now – Chuuk Lagoon is the provider. Without fishing, this subsistence economy would collapse.

18:49

Sinanter and Joe fishing with nets

Sinanter Polan and Joe Serious are just two Chuukese who rely on harvesting the marine life of the lagoon.

JOE SERIOUS: “Since many, many years ago, we still continue depending on the fish for eating and also for selling for earning money.

19:06

Joe

We need help”.

19:25

Joe and Sinanter fishing

WILLACY: Today’s catch of mackerel will be barely enough to feed these men’s children, so the thought that a massive oil spill could kill every living thing in this lagoon is terrifying.

GRADVIN AISEK: “We can have fish for breakfast. We can have fish for lunch.

19:28

Gradvin. Super: 
GRADVIN AISEK, Diver

 (laughing) We can have fish for dinner. Me I never get tired of fish. I eat fish every day”.

19:46

Fishing in lagoon

WILLACY: Those days could be over if one of those tankers splits.

19:56

Mangoes around lagoon

IAN MCLEOD: “The mangroves are the nursery ground. It’s the breeding home for a lot of the fish species and therefore the oil would kill them. And the

20:04

McLeod

island economy is based on fishing and it’s a sustenance for everybody on the island. And so if the fish go, the people will starve”.

20:14

Gradvin on dive at Fujikawa Maru

WILLACY: To dive master Gradvin Aisek, an oil spill would mean more than losing his living. These wrecks are like family.

GRADVIN AISEK: “Fujikawa Maru is an aircraft ferry transport. That wreck went down by a torpedo bomber.

20:30

It’s a very special wreck to me because that’s the first wreck I dove in 1974. That’s my first wreck dive -- and my dad really loved that wreck”.

20:44

WILLACY: On the hull of the Fujikawa there’s a memorial to Gradvin Aisek’s father. Kimiuo Aisek was inducted into the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame – so famous was he for exploring these wrecks. Now his son is the keeper of the ships and their secrets. To Gradvin Aisek the oil threatens not only living creatures and livelihoods, but the wrecks themselves.

20:58

GRADVIN AISEK: “Diving here in Chuuk is very, very important because it brings

21:28

Gradvin. Super: 
GRADVIN AISEK, Diver

a lot of people from around the world to visit Chuuk Lagoon because of the shipwrecks.

21:32

Underwater sea life/ Wrecks

And I think without the shipwrecks, no one will come to see our place. That’s why the shipwrecks are so important to us and to everybody”.

WILLACY: In a place where time has loped along at a very leisurely pace, there’s now a growing sense of urgency, that time may now be fast running out and the locals are in no doubt about the devastating consequences.

21:37

Fish

Music

22:07

WESLEY SIMINA: We will not be able to stop and that’s our worry because it’s not a question of

22:10

Simina

if it will happen, just a question of time when that will happen”.

22:13

Gradvin on dive

Music

22:17

GRADVIN AISEK: “I think it will kill most of everything because if there is oil still inside and it can spread around the lagoon and kill things living on the shore, kill anything on the top of the ocean, I think it will kill everything.

22:24

Gradvin

I think my heart will be broken. I think my heart will be devastated”.

22:44

Oil blobs rise to surface

Music

22:53

Reporter: Mark Willacy

Camera: Jun Matsuzono

Underwater camera: Matt Guest

Editor: Simon Brynjojffssen

Chuuk producer: Matt Guest

Japan producer: Yayoi Eguchi

23:12