
For many years, some historians doubted Outerbridge’s story until August 28, 2002, when the wreck submarine was located just five miles off the Hawaiian coast (and seven miles inside American territorial waters). What is truly frightening is that today some Japanese revisionists try to argue that America actually started the Pacific war because the Ward fired the first shot. They ignore the fact that that Japanese midget submarine was 3,000 miles from Tokyo. With such people it is vain to argue. There was one more striking irony about the history of the USS Ward. Outerbridge soon received another command (the USS Obrien, DD-725: the hull number certainly indicates how much the US Navy expanded during WWII). Exactly three years to the day after Pearl Harbor, the USS Ward was hit by a kamikaze pilot off the Philippines. The crew could not bring the resulting fires under control and had to abandon ship. It was Captain Outerbridge’s duty to sink his old ship by gunfire.
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