London, Nov. 21.
"I was in the engine room when suddenly there was a violent explosion immediately underneath," the Junior Second Engineer Minoru Kawashima of the Terukuni Maru stated in an interview today. "Tne force of the explosion threw me about a foot into the air. All the lights went out and the Senior Second Engineer and I stopped the main and dynamo engines, The oil tank was burst and fuel oil flooded the engine room, Then sea water came pouring in through a gaping hole in the ship's side. The Chief Engineer came down and several minutes later all the engineers and men went up on deck. The stern of the ship was already high out of the sea and the bow was submerged to the bridge.
"I went to my cabin to get some of my belongings," Mr. Kawashima continued, "and then joined the rest of the crew, who were getting into the lifeboats. Eight lifeboats in all were launched and nobody had jumped overboard. The captain left the ship thirty minutes after the explosion occurred and the ship sank a few minutes after he had left," Mr. Kawashima concluded.—Havas.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.