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 ...
If the Australians/allies had no human or signals intel and info sharing with the allies on the disposition of over 1,000 POWs ….along with civilian authorities and captured merchant seamen from their captured outpost…then it was a failure. That was a lot of people to lose track of. Just not a priority.
Did the Japanese attempt to conceal this large human transport of 1100 Australians on a merchant ship? They also paid the price.
>>off the coast of the Philippines by a United States submarine whose crew did not realize the vessel carried prisoners of war<<
Common occurrence around Indonesia when it was still known as the Dutch East Indies.
The dead are the dead. Matters not at this point. Many in the Philippines died trying to help the Allie’s with intel, insurgences, …. Let’s focus on the many successful operations. If you want vengeance, there are flights to Japan daily.
The ship and the remains are 2 1/2 miles underwater. Any kind of salvage at that depth is difficult to say the least. Salvaging the gold from HMS Edinburgh at a depth of 800 feet was considered extraordinary.
“”Common occurrence around Indonesia when it was still known as the Dutch East Indies.””
That is where the Pearl Harbor attack caught my dad.
What a negative post, it seems awfully naive about conditions and what intelligence was available.
And mine. Family was living on Java during Japanese invasion.
The losses on the Eastern Front dwarf anything else during WWII. The 1943 Battle of Kursk was horrendous. I have a Soviet book, a compilation of Soviet historians and generals descriptions of the battle that involved more than four million troops on both sides, over 69,000 field guns and mortars, 13,200 tanks and self-propelled artillery, and upwards of 11,000 aircraft.
The Germans lost about half a million officers and men, 1,500 tanks , 3,500 field guns and 3,700 aircraft according to the Soviets. Other estimates place German losses about a third of that. Soviet losses were estimated three times the Germans.
It is difficult to comprehend the scale of the battle. Kursk is in Russia not far from the Ukrainian border.
Wow, that sounds like an interesting story, did they have to stay there, were they evacuated, or were they natives, or what?
They’re still digging up the dead from both sides of the Kursk battle.
Saw a few videos on u tube . The artillery barrages must have been horrendous.
Wow....
You are the second person on this thread that doesn’t understand how this works.
The ship is a war grave, not to be disturbed.
Think about humans in Horoshima & Nagasaki. Probably more civilians killed in a short time by other humans in world history.
As Europeans (Dutch) we were considered by the Japanese as enemies and adult men were taken prisoner to be sent to Japan as slave labor. Transportation was by japanese merchant ship which was targeted by US subs. The Dutch living on Java were members of the ABCD (American, British, Chinese, Dutch) countries and considered Allies against the Japanese and all eligible for slave labor in Japan.
My dad was Navy in Borneo, after Pearl the U.S. told them “Japan started hostilities; govern yourselves accordingly.”
My dad was American navy.
The sinking if the Montevideo Maru also killed 5000 Japanese servicemen, more than killed in the sinking of any other single vessel.
“Am I the only one thinking the real reason they wont remove human remains is the cost?”
It’s a sacred burial ground, like the Arizona.
Depended on how the torpedo struck If hit at oblique angle would explode - it struck dead on (90 deg) the firing pin would jam Also if magnetic exploder would often malfunction and explode prematurely
What seems “negative” is that it seems like there was an intentional policy to destroy Japanese merchant shipping to disrupt their war effort, regardless of intelligence about POWs or civilians aboard. Even if and when the laborers being forcibly transported to Japan were allied POW’s. As was my father’s best friend who survived the Bataan Death March, sea transport, and years in a Japanese POW labor camp.
As the author of this study on Japanese “ hell ships” concludes, the intelligence was there. But the overriding mission was destruction of the Japanese ships.
So I was probably wrong about “ intel failure”.
Almost 20,000 died on the hell ships because they were accepted as war casualties.
QUOTE
Japanese treatment of Allied POWs was deadly in and of itself, Allied sinkings of hell ships notwithstanding. Even in a case like that of Oryoku Maru, with so many survivors, a prisoner’s chances of making it to the end of the war were slim.
Conclusion
The sinking of Oryoku Maru was the result of intercepted Japanese radio transmissions that would have revealed some information about POWs on board. Whether that information made its way down to the theater commanders is unclear. At any rate, there is no evidence to suggest that commanders at sea had any knowledge of the presence of POWs on Japanese ships.[23]
The issue of culpability is complicated and disquieting. As yet, no historian has taken it on directly. Gregory Michno, who has done more than anyone to uncover and make sense of the history of hell ships, offers a most sobering explanation: “War is hell, and hell is relative. The fatal Ultras were sent. Axis and Allies died together.”[24]
—Adam Bisno, Ph.D., NHHC Communication and Outreach Division, November 2019
The death toll was higher in the fire bombing of Tokyo.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.