submarines, and I-13, I-14, I-400, and I-401 all were to proceed to Singapore, where ten new M6A aircraft would await them for embarkation for another strike. On 13 July 1945, I-400 departed Nanao Bay bound for Maizuru, Japan, which she reached the same day in company with I-401. She began to load ammunition and three months of provisions. After a farewell ceremony for the aircraft crews on 18 July 1945 at the Shiraito Inn at Maizuru attended by the commander-in-chief of the 6th Fleet, Vice Admiral Tadashige Daigo, I-400 and I-401 got underway for Ōminato in northern Honshu on 20 July 1945, escorted by a minesweeper. After I-400 arrived at Ōminato on 22 July 1945, all crewmen received a day of shore leave, the aircraft had their Japanese markings replaced with American ones, and each submarine brought aboard a model of the Ulithi anchorage as a training aid for the pilots. I-400 departed Ōminato at 14:00 on 23 July 1945, followed by I-401 at 16:00, with Ariizumi embarked aboard the Submarine Division 1 flagship, I-401. The two submarines took separate routes in the Pacific Ocean far to the east of Japan, planning to rendezvous off Ponape in the Caroline Islands on 16 August 1945. I-400 weathered a typhoon on 28 July 1945. She was east of Saipan in the Mariana Islands on 5 August 1945 when an electrical fire broke out in a control panel on her port side. She surfaced to fight the fire, but her lookouts sighted an American convoy, forcing her to crash-dive. Her crew extinguished the fire while she was submerged, but her interior filled with smoke. To clear the air inside I-400, she rose to place her conning tower above the surface, remaining in this posture for the next five hours while she conducted emergency repairs and vented the smoke out of the interior via open conning tower hatches. Concerned by high levels of activity by American aircraft and surface ships near the planned rendezvous point, Ariizumi aboard decided on 14 August 1945 to alter course to the east of the Marshall Islands and meet I-400 at a new location south of Ponape that evening. He transmitted the new plans in a coded message to I-400, but I-400 never received the message, and missed the rendezvous. On 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced that hostilities between Japan and the Allies would end that day. At