LIFE AS A FEPOW · HELLSHIPS, 1944

 

The Rakuyo Maru

 

On 12 September 1944 the Rakuyo Maru was torpedoed while carrying 1,317 British and Australian survivors of the Burma–Siam Railway to Japan. 1,159 of them died.

 

 

 

Chosen for Japan

 

In 1944 the Japanese picked out the fittest survivors of the Burma–Siam Railway to be sent to work in Japan. They were brought down to Singapore, and 1,317 of them, around 600 British and 700 Australians, were put aboard the Rakuyo Maru, a passenger and cargo ship built in Nagasaki in 1921.

 

They were packed into space meant for fewer than 200 steerage passengers. The holds were split into decks less than four feet high, so the men could only sit, with the portholes sealed and air coming in only through the hatch.

 

 

 

 

Convoy HI-72

 

On 4 September 1944 the Rakuyo Maru sailed from Singapore in convoy HI-72, alongside the Kachidoki Maru, which carried around 900 more British prisoners. Neither ship was marked to show prisoners were on board.

 

Drinking water was short and rice was cooked in salt water. Several hundred men were moved up onto the open deck, where the sick lay in the sun by day and slept on bare boards at night.

 

 

 

 

Torpedoed in the South China Sea

 

In the early hours of 12 September 1944 the convoy was attacked by three American submarines, Growler, Pampanito and Sealion. At about 5.30 in the morning torpedoes from Sealion struck the Rakuyo Maru.

 

She stayed afloat for around twelve hours. The Japanese crew and guards took most of the lifeboats, and the escorts picked up Japanese survivors while leaving the prisoners in the water. That night the Kachidoki Maru was also sunk.

 

 

 

 

Rescue at Sea

 

Some 136 men were later picked up by a Japanese ship and taken on to Japan. Others who got away in lifeboats were never seen again.

 

On 15 September the submarines Pampanito and Sealion came back through the area and found survivors still clinging to oil-soaked rafts. Queenfish and Barb rescued more two days later. Around 150 men were brought to Saipan, and several died on the way. In all, around 1,159 of the 1,317 prisoners lost their lives.

 

 

 

 

Remembering the Rakuyo Maru

 

The men rescued by the American submarines gave the Allied governments their first eyewitness account of the Burma–Siam Railway and of how prisoners were being treated. Their stories were read out in the British and Australian parliaments in November 1944.

 

The British and Australian prisoners lost from the Rakuyo Maru had already survived the railway, and their sacrifice must never be forgotten.

 

Their story is one of many told on our Hellships page.