In order to intercept, decode, and act on these transmissions, the Allies established the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA) in September 1943. The commanders of these ships sent two daily communications to the Japanese military’s general headquarters, and these communications would have included POW counts. Intercepted radio transmissions were the Allies’ most important source of information about Japan’s requisitioned merchant ships. More than 1,000 Australian troops and 200 Australian administrative personnel, captured by the Japanese from New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands, went down with the ship. There had not even been time to pump the holds or lower more than a few of the lifeboats. Within minutes of the first explosion, Montevideo Maru sank by the stern. Wright’s submarine, Sturgeon (SS-187), had been in pursuit of its target for several hours before finally launching a torpedo attack in the small hours of the morning. Montevideo Maru became the first of the hell ships to be sunk by the U.S. The targets were the vessels as such and the people and supplies on board that were necessary to the continuation of the Japanese war effort.Īttacking Japan’s Requisitioned Merchant Ships These men and the other Allied POWs below decks were not, of course, the Allies’ target. Navy and the Allies effectively drowned many of their own men, who were trapped and concealed in the holds. In the process of sinking these vessels, the U.S. As Japanese forces picked up more and more Allied prisoners of war between 19, the cargo-laden vessels doubled as prisoner transports, obscuring any last distinction between ships that should be attacked and ships that should be spared. They plied the waters with the necessary cargoes, which the Japanese extracted from subject populations in occupied areas. Japanese hell ships therefore became integral to the massive effort to keep the war machine running. The Empire of Japan required great numbers of workers-often enslaved or coerced-and huge quantities of oil and other raw materials in order to wage war against the Allies, particularly the resource-rich United States. Nearly 6,000 people died: 4,120 Javanese laborers and 1,520 Allied POWs. On 18 September 1944, for example, a British submarine torpedoed and sank the Japanese hell ship Junyo Maru. Navy carried out most of these attacks but with the help of Allied intelligence services and the Royal Navy’s Far East patrols. Michno shows that by the end of the war, 134 Japanese hell ships had together embarked on more than 156 voyages, which carried an estimated 126,000 Allied prisoners of war.Īpproximately 1,540 Allied POW deaths resulted from conditions in the holds and violence aboard hell ships, whereas more than 19,000 deaths came as a consequence of Allied attacks.
In his comprehensive study of the sources, historian Gregory F. and Allied naval ships, submarines, and aircraft. Thirst and heat claimed many lives in the end, as did summary executions and beatings, yet the vast majority of deaths came as a result of so-called “friendly fire” from U.S. The holds were floating dungeons, where inmates were denied air, space, light, bathroom facilities, and adequate food and water-especially water.
Allied prisoners of war called them “hell ships,” the requisitioned merchant vessels that the Japanese navy overloaded with POWs being relocated to internment on the Japanese Home Islands or elsewhere in the empire.
0 kommentar(er)
