Veteran Highlight: Harry Arvidson

Harry Arvidson was a Navy submariner during World War II and was part of the crew to which the Japanese "super submarine" I-400 surrendered at the end of the war.

"I went in the service in July of 1942. We had gotten into the war on Dec 7 of '41, and I was just turning 17 and so I was going to have to register for the draft, and I didn't want to go into the Army, so I joined the Navy," said Arvidson. "I finished my sophomore year and then I quite high school and went in the Navy."

Arvidson went to the Navy's cooks and bakers school and then to submarine school. "I did many different things when I was in there. I went aboard the submarine in 1943 and I was on it 'til about April of '44. We made one war patrol, but we did other stuff," he said.

One of those other projects included an overhaul of a sub to install new radar equipment.

"We could go up on the surface and be pitch dark and still fire torpedos at 'em. The radar just picked them up so good," said Arvidson.

Arvidson describes cooking on the submarine as pretty similar to not being on a sub, except most food came in cans.

"Our flour would come in a can. Eggs were in cans; eggs were broken and then put in a can and froze. We had a lot of powdered milk, powdered potatoes. Frozen meat. We had quite a large freezer to keep meat in," said Arvidson. "We had a little bit of garbage and what we would do, we would save the cans and put it in there and seal it up. We would also, on smaller cans, cut the top and the bottom off and pinch it together to save room and then we would put all of it in little stacks, maybe 10-12 inches round and maybe a couple feet tall. We'd pack that, pinch it together, tie it up real good, and then at night we'd take it up and throw it in so it would sink. The reason we did it that way, we didn't want anything floating around to tell the Japs there was an American sub in the area."

The submarines job during the war was to sink ships, said Arvidson. "We were out amongst the islands and off the coast of Japan and try to run into convoys. They used to say that the submarine sank two-thirds of the Japanese military ships. We would be out there away from radio contact to anybody for an average of 50-60 days," he added.

"The size of a submarine, people don't have an idea of how big they are. They're 310 feet long," said Arvidson. "At the beginning of the war, our depth was about 300 feet. By the end of the war, they had it so they could go about 600 feet. They made it a little different, a different type of material. First submarines carried six torpedo tubes, so they could carry three loads, so they had 18 torpedos aboard the ship." Arvidson added that each torpedo was 21 feet long, 21 inches in diameter, and weighed 3000 pounds. The torpedo had a 600-pound warhead that blew up when it hit a ship.

Arvidson stayed at Midway Island for about five months after he got sick, he said. "I hadn't been feeling good and they probably decided I could have appendicitis and they don't want to do that when you're out there. We didn't have a doctor; all we had was a pharmacist."

After having his appendix removed, Arvidson went back to the United States for a few months and then headed overseas again.

"At that time I went on a sub tender. It's a big ship, it's really a submarine repair ship. We went to Guam; we were there when the war ended," he said. "The Japs had received the two bombs, and they decided to quit. We heard there was three Japanese subs that wanted to surrender. I went with 40 other guys-well, there was 40 of us-and we went over and met the I-400. At that time it was the biggest submarine in the world. It carried three airplanes. We boarded and rode with the Japs," said Arvidson, who added that they went to a submarine base at the mouth of Tokyo Bay.

Arvidson was discharged in March of 1946 and returned to Minnesota to marry Lola that September. "One thing led to the other and we had been married 72 years," said Arvidson. "We had two kids, Lynda and Scott."

In 1960, Arvidson opened a cafe in Conrad. "My son took it over from me in 1982," Arvidson said. The cafe is still run by Arvidson's son and daughter-in-law and was featured on episode 45 of Backroads of Montana.

Arvidson and his wife Lola, who passed away in 2019, both wrote books about their lives which are available at the Lincoln Library.