The serious accident undisclosed: institutionalized secrecy during the wartime mobilization of science and technology

In December 1937, a newly built naval destroyer encountered an unexpected turbine blade breakage accident. Since the accident involved a standard Kanpon type turbine, it caused great alarm. A special examination committee was established in January 1938 to investigate the accident. The committee was called Rinkicho in Japanese and, therefore, this chapter will refer to the accident as the Rinkicho accident hereafter. Today, there are five publicly available books containing references to the Rinkicho accident.⁹ The publication dates are different, but the authors/editors were all stakeholders of the Imperial Japanese Navy (see Table 4.3).

Table 4.3 References to the Rinkicho Accident

The accounts given in these references agree, for the most part, that the cause of the failure was identified soon enough to avoid serious adverse consequences. These references make up a kind of success story, though it is difficult to examine the failure more independently because little public evidence is available to corroborate these references. It appears that the accident was not made public because it occurred during wartime mobilization.

An examination of government documents from around the time of the accident can help to confirm the background of this secrecy. The government documents consulted here include the minutes of Imperial Diet sessions regarding the Navy during the 57th Imperial Diet session (held in January 1930) through the 75th Imperial Diet session (held in March 1940). The documents contain approximately 7,000 pages of Navy-related discussions. These discussions include 10 naval vessel incidents, as summarized in Table 4.4.

It is noteworthy in these discussions that the Fourth Squadron incident of September 1935, one of the most serious incidents in the history of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was made public and discussed in the Imperial Diet sessions within a year of its occurrence (on May 18, 1936).¹⁰ The Rinkicho accident, however, occurred on December 29, 1937, and was classified and handed down informally within the Navy even though it was major incident on a par with the Fourth Squadron incident.¹¹

More than two years after the Rinkicho accident, there was no mention in the Imperial Diet sessions that it was made public. Reports on the accident had already been submitted during the period from March to November 1938 (the final report was submitted on November 2); nevertheless, the Imperial Diet did not appear to have heard anything about the accident nor be aware of any measures taken to resolve or investigate its occurrence. The Rinkicho accident (like the Fourth Squadron incident) was so serious that it would likely have influenced the decision on whether to go to war with the United States and Britain.

The Fourth Squadron incident dramatically disclosed the inadequate strength and stability of the hull of standard naval vessels designed after the London naval disarmament treaty concluded in 1930.¹² Because the incident was made public and discussed in Imperial Diet sessions, there is a marked difference between the handling of the two incidents. The Director of the Naval Accounting Bureau, Harukazu Murakami, was forced to provide an answer to a question about the Fourth Squadron by Kanjiro Fukuda (Democratic Party) at the 69th Imperial Diet session held on May 18, 1936.¹³ Although his answer included no information regarding the damage to human resources (all members of the crew confined within the bows of the destroyers died), it accurately stated the facts of the incident and that material damage was incurred, amounting to 2.8 million yen. Even the damage due to the collision between cruisers about five years earlier in Table 4.4 was only 180,000 yen. This answer from a naval official clearly attested that the Fourth Squadron incident was so extraordinarily serious as to oblige him to disclose this fact to the public.¹⁴ In contrast, remedial measures for turbine problems on all naval vessels disclosed by the Rinkicho accident were expected to cost 40 million yen (Shibuya n.d.).

Table 4.4 Discussions about Naval Vessels in the Imperial Diet: January 1930-March 1940

Source: Produced from Kaigun Daijin Kanbo Rinji Chosa Ka (1984).

No detailed, open report of the Rinkicho accident, however, was ever presented at tlie Imperial Diet, which indicates that this accident was considered to be top secret information that never went beyond the Imperial Japanese Navy. As such, there are two important characteristics suggesting that institutionalized secrecy prevented the Rinkicho accident from being disclosed to the public: first, the accident would have influenced the decision on whether to go to war with the United States and Britain, so information on the accident could affect matters of public interest; second, the information was made top secret, and kept within the bounds of the special examination committee, and direct stakeholders. In light of the definition of institutionalized secrecy given in Chapter 1, there are two other conditions that should be met to solidly identify institutionalized secrecy: secrecy must be materialized by institutional design, and it must be considered harmful to public interests. If we can observe these conditions in the Rinkicho accident, then it can be considered “undisclosed” by institutionalized secrecy.

How can be these points be proven by evidence? This can be answered through documents owned by Ryutaro Shibuya, who was an Engineering Vice Admiral of the Navy at the time and was responsible for the turbine design of naval vessels. These documents will be referred to as the Shibuya Archives hereafter.