After 82 years, sunken WWII submarine with Minnesotans on board identified
Researchers confirmed debris is the USS Herring sunk in 1944. Who were the local sailors lost at sea?
The USS Herring was lost at sea on June 1, 1944. On June 1, 2026, 82 years to the day it sunk, researchers announced it had been positively identified off Matsuwa Island in Japan.
At first glance, it's hard to see why friends called John Martin Johnson "Stubby."
In his Navy portrait, the Minnesota native has the wholesome good looks of the boy next door. His dark blond hair is neatly combed, his blue eyes look directly into the camera and he wears an easy smile that gives little hint of the war ahead.
Minnesota native John Martin Johnson was lost on the USS Herring.
Johnson was born in Pine City, Minn., the son of farmer Gilbert Johnson and his wife, Anna. While he was still a child, the family — including younger siblings Kenneth, Ellen and Elna — moved to Superior, Wis., where Gilbert found work delivering ice.
John was an active student at Superior Central High School. He served as treasurer of the student council and as a member of its executive board. He also belonged to the writing club, booster club and rifle club.
He graduated in 1941. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor that December, Johnson joined thousands of other young Americans who answered their country's call by enlisting in the U.S. Navy.
He trained as a machinist's mate, a job that ultimately took him halfway around the world aboard the USS Herring, a Gato-class submarine that completed eight war patrols during World War II and sank seven enemy ships.
The submarine USS Herring (SS-233) was launched on Jan. 15, 1942, at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and commissioned on May 4, 1942. In this photo, the sub passes Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 1943.
It would also cost him his life.
On June 1, 1944, the Herring disappeared during combat near Japan's Kurile Islands. Johnson was one of 83 officers and sailors aboard.
The Navy eventually concluded the submarine had been lost, but its final resting place remained unconfirmed for decades.
Earlier this month, answers came.
On June 1, 2026 — 82 years to the day after the Herring was lost — the Naval History and Heritage Command announced it had positively identified the submarine nearly 300 feet beneath the waters off Matsuwa Island, Japan.
The confirmation marked the end of a nearly decade-long investigation that combined underwater exploration with painstaking historical detective work.
The story began in 2017, when a joint expedition by the Russian Geographic Society and the Russian military located a submarine wreck below the surface near the Kurile Islands. Based on its location and overall appearance, researchers believed it could be the Herring. But belief wasn't enough. The wreck could not be officially identified without stronger evidence.
The USS Herring's conning tower rises above the deck, with the deck gun visible in front. Researchers matched these features to wartime records.
A second expedition returned in 2022 to document the wreck more thoroughly and place a commemorative plaque honoring the sailors who never returned home. The photographs, measurements and survey data collected during those expeditions later became the key to solving the mystery.
The breakthrough came when two American volunteer researchers and a Japanese researcher analyzed the Russian survey data alongside wartime records preserved by both the U.S. Navy and the Japanese military.
Rather than relying solely on the submarine's location, they searched for physical evidence matching eyewitness accounts recorded on the day the Herring was lost.
The evidence fit almost perfectly.
The submarine rests upright on the seafloor with much of its structure still intact.
Photogrammetry images of the entire wreck site are computer-generated using a combination of high-resolution sonar data and high-resolution photographic images and give a good overview of the final resting place of the Herring.
Researchers found severe damage around the conning tower, matching Japanese reports that shore batteries scored two direct hits as the submarine attempted to escape into heavy fog after sinking two Japanese cargo ships. They also identified evidence that the bow had run aground, corresponding with wartime accounts describing the submarine briefly grounding before backing away under fire.
Taken together, those clues transformed a likely identification into a confirmed one.
Raymond Walter Christopherson was born to Norwegian parents in Warren, Minn. He was lost aboard the Herring in 1944.
Today, the Herring remains where it sank, protected under the Sunken Military Craft Act as a U.S. military war grave. While researchers may document the wreck using sonar and remote imaging, disturbing the submarine is prohibited without Navy authorization.
Although the wreck itself will remain untouched, its identification is helping bring new attention to the men who never came home.
Johnson was one of three Upper Midwest sailors aboard the Herring. But he wasn't the only one.
Raymond Walter Christopherson of Warren, Minn., also never returned home.
Robert Gerald Haskell, born in Manchester, S.D., was lost aboard the Herring.
Christopherson was born to Norwegian immigrant parents, and the family had ties to many Minnesota communities before moving west to Washington state, where Raymond enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to serve aboard the Herring as a torpedoman's mate, first class.
Robert Gerald Haskell of Manchester, S.D., was another.
The middle of five children born to farmer Clifton Haskell and his wife, Mabel. The family later moved to Mabel's home state of Wisconsin, where his father worked as a public school janitor. Before enlisting, Robert worked at the Fairbanks Morse manufacturing plant. Aboard the Herring, he served as a motor machinist's mate, second class.
William Stern from New York was lost on the USS Herring.
Today, Johnson, Christopherson and Haskell are remembered on the Tablets of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, where thousands of Americans whose remains were never recovered are honored.
The memorial lists only names. The volunteer-run "On Eternal Patrol" website preserves photographs of nearly every member of the Herring's crew. Looking through them, one thing becomes immediately clear: these are remarkably young faces.
There is impish William Stern with his mischievous grin.
Elmer Wuertele wears the confident smile of an all-American kid proudly posing in his pea coat.
Elmer Christian Wuertele from Denver, Colo., was lost.
And baby-faced John Burns Mayes looks as though he could still be in high school.
One after another, the portraits reveal what casualty lists cannot. These weren't just sailors. They were sons, classmates, farm boys, athletes, pranksters and dreamers whose lives were interrupted by war.
For decades, the Pacific Ocean kept the location of their submarine a secret.
Virginian John Burns Mayes was lost.
Now, thanks to modern technology, determined researchers and painstaking historical research, we have answers.
Eighty-two years ago, John "Stubby" Johnson smiled for a Navy portrait, unaware of where the war would take him.
Today, we finally know.
