Did the Japanese attack our ships off the West Coast?

Japanese submarines were directed to patrol off our West Coast shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to “Sunk; The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet 1941-1945” (by Mochitsura Hashimoto, page 63) the nine boats that patrolled between Hawaii and the mainland coast sank “about 10” ships. (In a related article, Wikipedia indicates that they sank just two ships and damaged six.It may be that neither number is reliable.) And that appears to be the end of the attacks against our shipping on the West Coast. Whether two ships or ten were sunk, the results were not significant.

NOTE: CDR Hashimoto was in command of the I-58 when it sank the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) in 1945.

After those patrols, most of the Japanese commerce raiding was to the south. The sinkings listed in Appendix B of “Sunk”; The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet 1941-1945” (by Mochitsura Hashimoto) were in the general areas of the Indian Ocean, the Coral Sea and around New Zealand. As the war progressed, Japanese captains considered the Central Pacific to be the “Hell War.” They were more likely to be sunk than to be successful.