Posted on 06/19/2009 4:01:42 PM PDT by naturalman1975
WHEN Kim Beazley slipped his feet under the desk as Australia's defence minister in 1984, he took charge of a vast department with a multibillion-dollar budget and gained access to the nation's most valuable military secrets. But even from his position at the apex of Australia's military machine he was unable to find a definitive answer to one of his family's most enduring mysteries: what happened to Uncle Syd.
Now, a quarter of a century on, Beazley has put his influence behind a campaign to demand answers to questions surrounding one of the nation's most tragic wartime episodes, the sinking of the Montevideo Maru.
Syd Beazley was a technical instructor and carpenter attached to a mission near Rabaul in New Britain in 1941 when the Japanese juggernaut swept through the South Pacific. He was captured along with the bulk of the Australian defenders, the 2/22 Infantry Battalion, known as the Lark Force, when the Japanese overran Rabaul in January 1942.
What now seems certain is that Syd Beazley was among the 845 prisoners of war and 208 civilians who were herded on to a Japanese "hell ship", the freighter Montevideo Maru, in Rabaul harbour on June 22, 1942.
Nine days later, at 2.40am off Luzon in The Philippines, the Montevideo Maru was hit by a torpedo fired from a US submarine and quickly sank. None of the PoWs or civilians survived.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Unsolved Mysteries, someone call Robert Stack
The fact she offered this comment means the reporter implied the US commander might be guilty of something. Typical of the moronic mentality of the liberal western press.
This, not Gitmo, is torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Sad. Were there international conventions at that time about marking PoW ships? IIRC, later in the war they marked such ships with green crosses and sailed with all lights burning. But that might have been after the surrender.
the U S Navy had a big problem with dud torpedoes early in the war. The USS Sturgeon could have used a few in that tragic event.
-Mystery of the missing hell ship-
“Mystery still surrounds aspects of this inquiry,
including the loss of a vital document that is believed
to have contained the names of all the passengers on the
Montevideo Maru. The manifest, written in Japanese,
was sent to Australia in 1946 but has disappeared
among millions of military records.”
-
I don’t understand what the “mystery” is?
That a document went missing?
“...they marked such ships with green crosses...”
-
That kind of stuff don’t work in a “real” war.
The japs would have put green crosses on every ship they had.
And so would we.
One of the only socialist politicians I've ever had any time for - he was a decent Defence Minister, and is a genuine patriot.
Sunk by the USS Sturgeon.
That we really don’t know who was and who wasn’t on the ship. There is a difference between being MIA because a body was never found, but you know where the person died, and being MIA with no idea what happened to the person at all.
He was more patient with that reporter than I woulda been.
The modern press seem to think the defense of our nation and allies is a criminal activity.
The sinking of the Sydney was a tragic story in itself. I believe that's the Cruiser that discovered the German Auxillary Cruiser Kormoran and was sunk by her. She damaged the Kormoran so badly the raider had to be scuttled. All hands were lost on the Sydney.
I think their were,but the Japanese did not give a damm for international law
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