Hell ship
It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and rōmusha (Asian forced slave laborers) out of the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, and Singapore in World War II.
These POWs were taken to the Japanese Islands, Formosa, Manchukuo, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma, or Siam to be used as forced labor.
Captured Patriot military personnel who refused to swear allegiance to the Crown during the conflict were kept by the British in prison ships, many of which were aging and dilapidated warships.
According to American historian Gregory F. Michno, during World War II 134 Japanese "hell ships" transported roughly 126,000 Allied POWs via more than 156 voyages.
During the war, the Japanese engaged in the widespread use of forced labour, including from Allied POWs, to produce the vast quantities of materials needed to maintain military operations.
Terminal dehydration, hyperthermia and starvation along with summary executions and excessive beatings led to the death of some, though the greatest cause of fatalities for POWs aboard these ships were Allied attacks, which unintentionally killed thousands of passengers; who got ever more effective in sinking japanese shipping the longer the war progressed.
As a result, such vessels could be attacked by Allied submarines and aircraft, meaning they were at risk of being sunk before they even reached their destination.
On October 24, 1944, the Arisan Maru was transporting 1,781 U.S. and Allied military and civilian POWs when it was hit by a torpedo from a U.S. submarine (either USS Shark or USS Snook), at about 5:00 p.m.; it finally sank about 7:00 p.m. No POWs were killed by the torpedo strikes, and nearly all were able to escape from the ship's holds, but the Japanese did not attempt to rescue any of them from the sea.
It was reported that many of the lifeboat occupants were Indian POWs of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment, plus escorts from the Japanese 26th Field Ordnance Depot.
[16] Of 1,126 men aboard Buyo Maru, 195 Indians and 87 Japanese died in all,[17] between the shooting incident and the initial sinking, (the exact number of dead varied according to sources).
However, on January 9, the Enoura Maru was bombed and disabled by aircraft from USS Hornet while in harbor, killing about 350 men.
The 5,065-ton tramp steamer Jun'yō Maru sailed from Tandjoeng Priok (Batavia) on 16 September 1944 with about 4,200 romusha slave labourers and 2,300 POWs aboard.
On 18 September 1944 the ship was 15 miles off the west coast of Sumatra near Benkoelen when HMS Tradewind hit her with two torpedoes, one in the bow and one in the stern.
[20][21] Lisbon Maru was carrying 2,000 British POWs from Hong Kong to Japan in appalling conditions when torpedoed by USS Grouper on 1 October 1942.
Oryoku Maru was a 7,363-ton passenger cargo liner transporting 1,620 survivors of the Bataan Death March, Corregidor, and other battles, mostly American, packed in the holds, and 1,900 Japanese civilians and military personnel in the cabins.
As she neared the naval base at Olongapo in Subic Bay, U.S. Navy planes from USS Hornet attacked the unmarked ship, causing it to sink on December 15.
[23]Rakuyo Maru was torpedoed on 12 September 1944 by USS Sealion which later realized the ship carried 1,317 Australian and British prisoners of war from Singapore to Formosa (Taiwan).
Japanese guarding the prisoners opened fire on them while they were trying to abandon ship or swim to the nearby island of Mindanao.
Minesweeper W-12 picked up the Japanese survivors although recently released documents state that W-12 machine-gunned the surviving POWs (a minimum of 250) in the water.
The film reproduced scenes of the camps and ships, showed drawings and writings of the prisoners, and featured Loretta Swit as the narrator.
[27][28] The Midnight Oil song In the Valley mentions the sinking of Montevideo Maru, where the narrator's grandfather drowned, "the Rising Sun sent him floating to his rest".
