|
|
|
|
|
|||
Poor weather was experienced on the
entire trip south with their first encounter of icebergs
coming on February 26. Clawing their way south through the
drifting bergs, the coast of Victoria Land was finally
sighted on March 6. Conditions were still so poor that a
landing was simply impossible. They sailed on through the
Ross Sea towards Coulman Island only to find the weather
worse than what they had left. Snow fell continuously,
storms pounded them and soon they found themselves
surrounded by a heavy ice pack. It was impossible to go
further so Shirase ordered the depressed crew to turn the
ship northward for Australia. They arrived at the harbor in
Sydney on May 1, 1911 and were immediately greeted with
suspicion and hostility. Accommodations were not
forthcoming. It was left to a resident of upscale Vaucluse
to grant them free use of part of his garden to erect their
prefabricated hut. Captain Nomura and several members of the
crew returned to Japan in an attempt to raise additional
funds while the rest of the expedition remained behind, with
little money and food, living a life close to that of a
beggar. Shirase
expressed his anger with the hostility of the local
newspapers when he sadly wrote, "The New Zealand press
viewed our attempt with ridicule. The New Zealand
Times was particularly poignant in its comments upon us.
It remarked that we were a crew of gorillas sailing about in
a miserable whaler, and that the polar regions were no place
for such beasts of the forest as we. The zoological
classification of us was perhaps to be taken figuratively,
but many islanders interpreted it literally, because crowds
of people came to our tents daily to observe the 'sporty
gorillas' misguided with the crazy notion of conquering the
South Pole". A former member of Ernest
Shackleton's 1907 expedition
came to the rescue. Professor Edgeworth David, from the
University of Sydney, learned of Shirase's misfortune and
his enthusiastic involvement did much to reassure the
Australian public. Nobu
Shirase had originally intended to reach the South Pole but
it was clear to him that he was now too far behind the other
expeditions led by Roald
Amundsen and Robert
Scott. The second attempt at
landfall on the Antarctic mainland began from Sydney Harbor
on November 19, 1911. Now that the quest for the Pole was
out of the question, attention was turned towards completion
of scientific work and exploration at King Edward VII Land.
After celebrating New Year's Day with a traditional banquet,
they reached the Ross Ice Shelf on January 16, 1912. A party
was sent ashore at a spot they named Kainan Bay but the ice
was filled with so many crevasses that the safety of the men
would be in constant jeopardy. The party came back on board
and the Kainan Maru headed off to the west. Before
long the men were startled to see another ship dead ahead.
At first they thought it might be a pirate but were
subsequently reassured to learn that it was Amundsen's
Fram, which was waiting for Amundsen's return from
the Pole. Visits were exchanged but language difficulties
prevented any serious discussion. Shirase
was now faced with the task of getting his party to the top
of the ice shelf, which was 300 feet high at the place where
the Kainan Maru was moored. "We were resolved to
scale the so-called insurmountable barrier or die", wrote
Shirase. Some 60 hours later, after cutting a zig zag path
up the nearly perpendicular slope, the first men stood at
the top. A small party was sent ashore to investigate the
ice and when they returned with encouraging reports Shirase
decided to make it the starting point of his so-called Dash
Patrol. The Dash Patrol consisted of seven men, two of which
would remain at the edge of the ice shelf as a base camp
while the other five would make a dash to the south on
sledges pulled by dogs. As it turned out, it was anything
but a dash. On the first day blizzard conditions
forced them to make camp after only eight miles. It would be
two days later before the "dash" resumed but progress was
again very slow since each dog had to pull 57 pounds. They
struggled on, through terrible conditions, until January 28;
they had covered 160 miles. The men stuck a Japanese flag,
on a bamboo pole, into the ice and saluted the Empire with a
threefold Banzai before burying a copper case
containing a record of their journey. At this time Shirase
made the wise decision to turn back for the ship. While
Shirase was off with the Dash Patrol, the Kainan Maru
had left the Bay of Whales to drop a shore party at Biscoe
Bay in King Edward VII Land. The men were able to climb a
150-foot ice slope and go on to reach the foot of the
Alexandra Range, which until then had not been seen at close
range. A large crevasse prevented them from reaching the
summit of the mountains but a memorial board was erected to
commemorate the journey. After the men returned, the
Kainan Maru made her way back to the Bay of Whales.
The wind was against her and it was not until February 2
that she could enter the bay. With considerable difficulty
the Dash Patrol was taken on board and the ship made ready
for her trip to the north. The ship made one more calling at
Wellington and reached Yokohama on June 20, 1912. The
expedition had sailed over 30,000 miles since leaving Japan
and despite not reaching the Pole, they had achieved all
their other goals after departing from Australia. They may
have left in a silent departure, but their welcome in
Yokohama was a tremendous reception. Nobu Shirase died in
1946.
Born
in 1861, Nobu Shirase's first exposure to exploration came
on an expedition to the Karil Islands, north of Japan, in
1893. He was an unknown lieutenant in the army when his
struggles to organize a Japanese expedition to Antarctica
began. Fighting both government and public ridicule, success
only arrived when the support of Count Okuma, a nobleman and
former Premier of Japan, was gained. Fortunately his
financial needs were modest as the public grudgingly donated
the necessary funds. When Japan's first expedition to the
Antarctic sailed from Tokyo on December 1, 1910, only a
handful of students watched the departure. Their vessel, the
Kainan Maru, was only 100 feet in length. The ship
arrived at Wellington, New Zealand on February 7, 1911 and
four days later departed for the Antarctic. 