Photos: World War II relics on Kiska Island in the Aleutians

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Serena Selbo and Karen Clark, directors with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, inspect a World War II mini submarine as The US Fish and Wildlife Service research boat R/V Tiglax stops at Kiska Island in the Aleutian Islands on Saturday, June 6, 2015. Scientists on the R/V Tiglax conduct research in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

On a damp island far out in the Aleutian chain, a secret weapon of Japan's World War II Navy sinks into the sod. A Type-A midget submarine the shape of a killer whale was one of six the Japanese carried to Kiska Island in 1942.

Debra Corbett, an archaeologist who spent five weeks on Kiska last year, has imagined the plight of elite Japanese seamen assigned to operate the subs. Two men squeezed into the ship, which historians compared to torpedoes that could fire smaller torpedoes at ships from point-blank range.

READ MORE: World War II-era Japanese mini-submarine rusts on Kiska