Mr. Hillman, 

In perusing your website on HMCS PRINCE ROBERT, I noticed a textual error in Part 4, "Hong Kong 1941". The sunken vessel CYNTHIA OLSON, which the Canadian AMC searched for after the air attack on Pearl Harbor, was NOT in fact a U.S. Navy transport. There are indeed many contradictory claims out there about this ship and her fate, but she had been chartered by the U.S. Army to carry lumber from the Pacific Northwest to Oahu. Her never-found crew, including two army personnel (a radio operator and a medic), may have been the victims of Japanese atrocity. If you're interested, a 2010 book, Stephen Harding's VOYAGE TO OBLIVION (Amberley Publishing), may reveal some of her secrets and straighten out some of the fascinating inconsistencies regarding this vessel.

# Some websites designate her as a full, if recently acquired, U.S. Army Transport (USAT). I'm nearly 100% certain she was not, but rather a steamship chartered by the U.S. Army on a time or voyage basis (very likely NOT a bare boat charter). Indeed, the routing chart you include in Part 4 clearly identifies CYNTHIA OLSON as an army vessel--only the textual part above is wrong.

# She is often termed a steam schooner, implying a wooden hull (and her construction date of 1918 does not rule out such a possibility, as many a wooden-hulled steamer had been constructed during the previous war emergency). She was also a lumber carrier, so there may be some confusion about wood in regard to this vessel. That it took a lot of shells to sink her may indeed imply she was of wooden construction.

# There is some controversy over when I-26--the IJN submarine that would on the night of June 20, 1942, shell Estevan Point Lighthouse, Vancouver Island--surfaced near CYNTHIA OLSON and opened fire, but it appears to have been shortly before the first hostile aircraft appeared over Pearl Harbor. If so, then Cmdr. Minoru Yokota was disobeying orders, because clearly Japan wanted the first overt act to be bombing aircraft over Pearl, not an attack on an insignificant 2100-ton lumber carrier to tip off the Americans. Yokota's act was compounded by his decision to sink the American vessel by surface gunfire, which gave her radio operator time to get off an emergency message. Whatever, the attack on CYNTHIA OLSON was not the first act of war in the eastern Pacific as some websites claim: USS WARD (DD-139) had of course fired on a Japanese midget submarine off the entrance to Pearl Harbor at just after 6:30 a.m.

# The utter disappearance of CYNTHIA OLSON's crew is on the face of it suspicious, suggesting to many that they had been murdered in their lifeboats. I-26 would be no stranger to atrocity--e.g., the 1944 machine-gunning of the crew of SS RICHARD HOVEY in their lifeboats--but that would be under another captain, Lt. Cmdr. Toshio Kusaka, who would be imprisoned for war crimes after hostilities had ended. To support the contention that Commander Yokota did not do such a thing, Lt. Cmdr. Narahara Shogo, captain of I-19, which passed through the area the following day, claims to have provided some food to the men in the lifeboats. Was somebody lying? 

Anyway, I recommend the three following websites for additional information on the history and fate of CYNTHIA OLSON, from both sides as it were:

http://www.west-point.org/class/usma1955/D/M/PH_1.htm#SSCO
http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-26.htm
http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-19.htm
 

Nelson Lawry
Rollinsford, NH