Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
‘They Have No Grave but the Cruel Sea’
The 81-year search for the Montevideo Maru has ended. On July 1, 1942, the American submarine Sturgeon fired four torpedoes from its stern tubes. Two of those torpedoes hit their target and 11 minutes later, the Montevideo Maru slipped below the surface and came to rest 13,000 feet below the water’s surface.
An estimated 1,080 persons from 14 countries lost their lives in the early morning hours off the coast of Luzon, in the Philippines. Approximately 900 Australian POWs and civilians were lost that day.
There is no plan to try and recover their bodies. The ship is their tomb, and out of respect, there will be no salvage efforts. There were other sinkings of ships carrying POWs and civilians by American submarines during WWII.
They have no grave but the cruel sea,
No flowers lay at their head,
A rusting hulk is their tombstone,
Afast on the ocean bed.They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.— Attributed to Laurance Binyon, English poet
Ships were supposed to be marked to indicate that were carrying POWs, or if they were hospital ships. My late father told me a story that on one of his war patrols, they were stalking a Japanese ship but determined it was a hospital ship and let it pass.
In my research, I cannot find what the markings were supposed to be. My best guess would be the symbol for the Red Cross, painted on both sides of the hull, or on the stacks.
There were other ships carrying POWs that were sunk by American submarines in the Pacific. Rescues were rare and survivors were found several days later by submarines as they continued their patrol in the area of the attack.
Ships carrying POWs and interned civilians were called Hell Ships due to the brutal conditions aboard them. The best explanation for these sinkings I could find is in the following quotes.
Intercepted radio transmissions were the Allies’ most important source of information about Japan’s requisitioned merchant ships. The commanders of these ships sent two daily communications to the Japanese military’s general headquarters, and these communications would have included POW counts.
In order to intercept, decode, and act on these transmissions, the Allies established the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA) in September 1943. Allied intelligence units in Australia and elsewhere in the region monitored Japanese and other Axis radio traffic and relied on the decryption and translation skills of women and men at intelligence facilities in Bletchley Park, England; Delhi, India; and Colombo, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka). Their work done, the intercepted messages now constituted actionable intelligence.
This actionable intelligence was then edited down for use in Ultras, short for “ultrasecret” communiqués going out to theater commanders. Next, those theater commanders would read the Ultras and decide which information to release to Allied ship commanders. In the end, the ship commanders received the bare minimum: ship name, location, destination, approximate size, and defenses. Somewhere along the chain, between the deciphering of the intercept and the transmission of information to ship commanders, details about POWs were excised. Individual ship commanders would not have known that their targets contained Allied POWs or even Japanese civilians.
May those left behind find peace. May those who lost their lives rest in peace.
Published in History
Hospital ships were supposed to be marked with red crosses on the sides and funnels and – most importantly – be lit up at night. A lot of warships and merchant vessels hated being moored near a hospital ship because of that. Often the enemy would leave the hospital ship alone, but attack any unlighted ships illuminated by the hospital ship.
The Japanese caught the Russian fleet attempting to reach Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War because a scouting cruiser spotted the lights of the Russian fleet’s hospital ship.
And so turns history. Without that victory, would the Japanese have been as adventuresome militarily?
I saw this in the news and have to commend the Australian government for making a big deal about it with appropriately solemn statements. Rest in peace all ye combatants.
There were Russian merchant ships on the Pacific route that were sunk by US submarines:
There are some stories that the Russians might have been trading some Lend-Lease supplies from Portland and Seattle with the Japanese for gold. There is another story that Russian complaints were answered by COMSUBPAC telling them to start identifying their ships with the Russian flag and identifiers on their hulls and stacks.
My father served on the USS Sand Lance and the USS Tilefish. He has four stars on his Asia Pacific Ribbon. He has a Presidential Unit Citation Ribbon with one star. His Submarine Combat Pin has three stars indicating three or more successful war patrols.
A hearty salute to your dad . . .
It’s great to see this closure for the victims of Montevideo Maru. It was but one of the many prison ships that was sunk while transporting POWs among the many places the Japanese had conquered. While working on a project for a university class a few years ago, I found some resources on this topic. Here’s a portion of one of them, by Gavan Daws, titled Prisoners of the Japanese. POWs of World War II in the Pacific, that touches on these questions and gives an idea of the scale of the loss of lives (pages 295–297):
Continued from last post.
There can be many different opinions regarding the American sinking of so many Japanese merchant ships, even if there was risk that POWs were onboard. There’s more in the section from Daws quoted above on this question. I also located some documents documenting POW experiences. One of them is a declassified record of the interview of the Executive Officer of the USS PAMPANITO, Lieutenant Commander Landon Davis, Jr., conducted on 20 October 1944. The PAMPANITO rescued a group of POWs from a prison ship that had been sunk by the USS SEALION off of the Chinese coast near Hainan Island. On pages 12-13, he described the opinion of survivors regarding the sinking, and it might surprise you.