LIFE AS A FEPOW · HELLSHIPS, 1943

 

The Suez Maru

 

In November 1943 the Suez Maru sailed from Ambon carrying around 550 sick Allied prisoners. Not one of them came home.

 

 

 

Leaving Ambon

 

The Suez Maru was an old Japanese cargo ship pressed into service as a transport. In late November 1943 she sailed from Ambon, in the Moluccas, for Surabaya on Java. On board were about 200 wounded Japanese soldiers and around 550 Allied prisoners of war — English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Dutch, and one New Zealander.

 

The prisoners were all sick men from the work camps of Ambon and the Moluccas, being moved because they could no longer work. Around twenty of them had to be carried aboard on stretchers.

 

 

 

 

Torpedoed in the Java Sea

 

Like every hellship, the Suez Maru carried no markings to show that prisoners were on board. On 29 November 1943, near Kangean Island east of Madura, she was attacked by the American submarine USS Bonefish. Hit by torpedoes, she sank in about twenty minutes. Many of the prisoners in the rear hold were killed or trapped, but between 250 and 380 men escaped into the sea.

 

 

 

 

Murdered in the Water

 

The survivors spent about eight hours in the water waiting for rescue. When the Japanese minesweeper W-12 returned, it picked up only the Japanese survivors and pushed the prisoners back into the sea. Its officers then had riflemen and machine guns turned on the men in the water, under an order that prisoners were to be shot if the ship was torpedoed. Every prisoner was killed.

 

 

 

 

A Hidden Crime

 

The minesweeper’s report claimed that the prisoners had been locked in the holds and had gone down with the ship. The truth only came out in 1949, when a Japanese survivor gave evidence. Two officers were arrested but later released, and no one was ever tried. For decades the families of the men were never told how they had died.

 

 

 

 

Remembering the Suez Maru

 

A memorial to the men of the Suez Maru was dedicated at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire on 29 November 2013, the 70th anniversary of the sinking. The Suez Maru Families and Research Association keeps a roll of honour and works to keep their story alive.

 

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