Mr. Hall, 52, has said he was the civilian who pulled a switch that set off the emergency surfacing operation.
Navy officials said that the civilians, on an outing to build public relations, were closely monitored during an emergency surfacing drill and did not cause the accident.
But Navy officials said yesterday they would no longer conduct emergency surfacing drills with civilians on board or let them sit at controls.
To save time, he rushed the periscope search conducted just before the emergency surfacing drill that caused the accident, and failed to spot the approaching Japanese ship.
Greeneville, a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine, collided with and sank a Japanese fishing training vessel during a demonstration of an emergency surfacing maneuver intended to impress visitors.
Under those procedures, a submarine conducting an emergency surfacing drill would first rise to a periscope depth of about 45 feet and search surrounding waters both visually by periscope and acoustically, with a passive sonar device.
The first is how the 360-foot submarine could have failed to detect the presence of the 190-foot trawler, the Ehime Maru, before proceeding with an extremely rapid emergency surfacing drill.
Nine Japanese crewmen and students drowned when their ship, the Ehime Maru, was ripped open by the Greeneville, a nuclear attack submarine, on Feb. 9 in an emergency surfacing drill.
But as a precaution, the Navy has ordered all submarine commanders to keep civilian visitors from sitting at control panels and has told the commanders not to perform emergency surfacing maneuvers with civilians on board.
In emergencies, surface water sources are often used by relief agencies to provide raw water for treatment and subsequent supply to internally displaced people (IDPs) or refugees.
