Posted on 04/22/2023 11:05:26 AM PDT by rod5591
A Japanese merchant ship sunk during World War II while carrying more than 1,000 Allied prisoners of war has been found, officials announced Saturday.
The Montevideo Maru was torpedoed on July 1, 1942, off the coast of the Philippines by a United States submarine whose crew did not realize the vessel carried prisoners of war.
It was Australia’s largest maritime wartime loss with a total of 1,080 lives.
The 12-day search of the Luzon island in the South China Sea by a team of explorers using an autonomous underwater vehicle with in-built sonar took them 13,120 feet below the sea – deeper than the Titanic – to find the wreck.
No efforts will be made to remove human remains and artifacts out of respect for the families of those who died, according to a statement Saturday from Sydney-based Silentworld Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to maritime archaeology and history.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The older I get the more I hate war.
“War is a racket!” -General Smedley D. Butler
It’s sad most people never heard of him.
So much for leaving no soldier behind.
That would bring closure for over 1,000 families. It would be hard knowing how they died and that they were POW’s of the Japanese, knowing how inhumane they were to Americans.
But they would be accounted for at least.
The only survivors rescued were the Japanese.
“No efforts will be made to remove human remains and artifacts out of respect for the families of those who died, according to a statement Saturday from Sydney-based Silentworld Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to maritime archaeology and history.”
Am I the only one thinking the real reason they wont remove human remains is the cost?
Years ago I had a friend who was an older fellow. Sometimes I’d go over to his house and help him with his computer problems. Once I was in his study and I needed a screwdriver. He told me that there was one in a box on the shelf.
There were lots of boxes, I grabbed one on a high shelf towards the back. It was a cigar box. What I saw shocked me, there were brutal pictures of emaciated American soldiers from WWII and other people who kind of looked Japanese but apparently were Pilipino. There were pics of some pretty brutal stuff. They were pics from the Bataan Death March.
When he saw me looking at the black and white pictures, he gently took the box from me and said, “this is something I’d prefer to forget about”. He would never talk about it and none of the members of his family including his wife knew what I was asking about when I brought it up. They all said that “daddy never talks about the war”.
Mankind can be brutal and IMO opinion that brutality is more likely to come from the emotional leftists than from any other group of people and from the mentally ill on the left who think babies are not babies, they can change the weather and that there are more than two sexes.
Aussies killed by American friendly fire.
Tragic.
...
I believe this was the ship that the Smothers Brothers lost their father on. Several members of Class of 39 (Naval Academy) died on it also. I’ll have to check Visual Memorial Wall but at least one swam to island. Later to die.
What a terrible intel failure
The big surprise is that the USN had a functioning torpedo in 1942. From what I’ve read, virtually NO US torpedoes worked at all until spring-summer 1943. Ironic that this early one took so many US lives; although once in Japanese custody, their survival outlook was pretty grim anyway, torpedo or not.
****************
how would that intel have been gained?
there were no satellites to track ships from space. Photography from aircraft is very limited when the enemy can put up clouds of fighters over the target to be photo’d.
Spies? And how would those have been put into place?
At the time of the fall of Rabal, the US and allies where seriously on the back foot. losses everywhere. I doubt there were even assets in place for air photo.
So, for it to be a failure, there had to be some sort of chance for a success. None existed.
Presentism.
Just because we have global coverage now, doesn’t mean we always did.
Can there be reparations for the families?
Let them rest. God knows where they are buried and will raise them from the depths and make them whole again. Rest in peace men.
From Wikipedia:
USS Arizona Memorial
The USS Arizona Memorial, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and commemorates the events of that day. The attack on Pearl Harbor led to the United States’ involvement in World War II.
war is started by old men for their glory, but it is the young men, the very best of the nation that fight and die for the glory of those old men.
Amen.
Rod. I doubt there is very much left to recover at this point.
Not an "intel" failure!
It is the usual "fog of war"...
There are many hundreds of American sailors sleeping at the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound or were injured as a result of "friendly" fire resulting from the American Navy's night-battle incompetence...
There many other POW transports attacked or sunk by friendly fire...
One, off the coast of Portugal. was attacked by an American bomber AFTER a German U-boat captain had negotiated a truce to allow the allies to save the allied survivors...
The Italians (Germany's principal ally) lost about 2000 POWs when a German sub sank a transport ship off the coast of Africa...
Throughout the war in the South Pacific, intel had many major victories, while friendly fire (unrelated to intel) on both land and sea was common and cost thousands of American, Australian, Indian, Chinese, and British lives...
Well that is sad. Something to think about if you are eager to start another war.
I appreciate your point, but in this case there would be very little that could provide anyone solace. DNA would have been degraded to the point of useless. And if there were 1,000 POWs in the hold, it would simply be a big pile of “muck” by now.
And getting bodies out of it would create a mess.
It sounds cold, but knowing where they are is about as good as you get some times.
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