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 ...
With all the chaos at that point it would have been a good trick to know the movements of those prisoners, the ship, and to notify the submarine, it was only a few months earlier when my dad’s ship had been thought sunk and the Japs were sure they had sunk it only to have it limp into NYC months later.
War is hell.
You can escape from fire by finding suitable shelters.
You can NOT hide from nuclear blast radiation. It will incinerate every living creature in its zone.
The USS Arizona, and the fact that they did not do any rescue efforts to free sailors still alive within. They signaled, and it was reported to higher ups, but they made the choice to write them off.
FDR was practically worshipped by the majority of that generation......... To say nothing of foreknowledge of the attack, and holding off the Japanese ambassadors so they could not declare war, which the government knew they were coming to do. They had broken the code, but decided it would be more important at a later date. BELIEVE IT OR NOT.
Japs and NYC? Huh?
If you mean how did it start in Makassar Strait and end up in NYC, that is what made that ship famous.
“She made Tjilatjap with a forward draft of 30 feet (9.1 m), aft 22 feet (6.7 m). Unable to be docked there, her worst leaks were repaired and she put to sea again on 13 February. Some of her wounded crew were taken off the ship to be cared for by Dr Corydon M. Wassell; he received the Navy Cross for protecting them from capture by the invading Japanese. When the ship left Tjilatjap it was on the first leg of a voyage of more than 21,589 miles (34,744 km) in search of complete repairs.
Still steering with her engines, she made Trincomalee, Ceylon on 21 February. Repairs could not be made there or anywhere in India for several weeks, so Marblehead departed for South Africa on 2 March. After touching at Durban and Port Elizabeth, Marblehead arrived at Simonstown on 24 March. There she underwent extensive repairs and on 15 April, sailed for New York. Steaming via Recife, Brazil, she finally arrived in New York on 4 May, completing a journey of over 16,000 miles (26,000 km) from where she was damaged in action and immediately entered drydock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”
My preference would be to be bombed with conventional bombs than be nuked.
Firebombing of other major cities in Japan killed far more in a single bombing sortie. The B-29s dropped only incendiaries and the Japanese wooden homes with rice paper windows went up in huge flash fires. Documented on mission films released after the war. Deaths were civilians, and as most civilians who weren’t involved in agriculture/food production were involved in military plants (aviation, steel, small arms, ammunition- which was Nagasaki’s principal industry from the targeting data of Fat Man’s mission)— every civilian was “on the ground” for the final defense of the island.
Several excellent scholarly books have been written on this topic, as well as the “needless” bombings in the European theater. The issue of civilians killed in wars left the harbor back in the 1800’s worldwide.
[My dad was Navy in Borneo, after Pearl the U.S. told them “Japan started hostilities; govern yourselves accordingly.”]
Given what happened to a couple of capital ships of the Royal Navy just days after Pearl Harbor, those would have been exciting times for anyone at sea, civilian or military, on either side.
How lonely it must have been for various military people around the world, small detachments, ships, small commands, and isolated outposts, the horror of learning that you are on your own and there is little hope that things will end well for you.
No one is coming to help and you don’t even know what is happening to them.
If you look into that ship you will also see that she began the war fighting the Japanese and ended the war fighting the Germans.
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