Hell Ships

A hell ship is a ship with extremely unpleasant living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and romushas (Asian forced laborers) out of the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore in World War II. The POWs were taken to Japan, Taiwan, Manchuria, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma or Siam to be used as forced labor.

The Japanese Hell Ships
Lisbon Maru was carrying 2,000 British POWs from Hong Kong to Japan in appalling conditions when torpedoed by USS Grouper on 1 October 1942. 800 POWs died when the ship sank the following day. Many were shot or otherwise killed by the ship's Japanese guards.

Rakuyo Maru was torpedoed 12 September 1944 by USS Sealion which later realized the ship carried Allied POWs. Footage of some of the survivors subsequently being picked up by the submarine is available HERE.

Suez Maru was a 4,645-ton freighter with passenger accommodation. She sailed on 25 November 1943 with 548 POW (415 British and 133 Dutch) from Ambon bound for Surabaya. The POWs were all sick men from the work-camps on the Moluccas and Ambon. Twenty were stretcher cases. On 29 November 1943 the ship was torpedoed by USS Bonefish (SS-223) near Kangean Island east of Madoera Island. Most of the POWs drowned in the holds of the ship. Those who escaped from the holds and left the ship were shot by the Japanese. There were no POW survivors.

Bunyo Maru was a 5,300 ton transport carrying mainly Indian POWs of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Punjab Regiment, plus escorting forces from the 26th Field Ordnance Depot. It was torpedoed by Wahoo (SS-238), commanded by Commander Dudley W. Morton, on 26 January 1943 . Morton was responsible for ordering the machine gunning of the shipwrecked survivors, in the water, including the POWs. The Hague Convention of 1907 bans the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances. Whatever the case, Morton and his executive officer O'Kane had misidentified the survivors as Japanese.

Shinyo Maru was attacked by the submarine USS Paddle on 7 September 1944. Two torpedo hits sank the ship and killed several hundred U.S., Dutch and Filipino servicemen. Japanese guarding the prisoners opened fire on them while they were trying to abandon ship or swim to the nearby island of Mindanao. 47 Japanese and 687 Allied POWs were killed.

The 5,065-ton tramp steamer Junyo Maru sailed from Batavia (Tandjoeng Priok) on 16 September 1944 with about 4,200 romusha slave labourers and 2,300 POWs aboard. These Dutch POWs included 1,600 from the 10th Battalion camp and 700 from the Kampong Makassar camp. This 23rd transport of POWs from Java was called Java Party 23. Java Party 23 included about 6,500 men bound for Padang on the west coast of Sumatra to work on the Sumatra railway (Mid-Sumatra). On 18 September 1944 the ship was 15 miles off the west coast of Sumatra near Benkoelen when HMS Tradewind hit her with two torpedoes, one in the bow and one in the stern. About 4,000 romushas and 1,626 POWs died when the ship sank in 20 minutes. About 200 romushas and 674 POWs were rescued by Japanese ships and taken to the Prison in Padang, where eight prisoners died.

The 600-ton Maros Maru (sometimes called Haruyoshi Maru) sailed from Ambon on 17 September 1944 routed along the south-coast of Celebes with about 500 British and Dutch POWs bound for Surabaya. On 21 September 1944 the ship arrived at Muna Island south of Celebes) to embark 150 POWs. The ship required engine repairs upon arrival in Makassar. Here 159 POWs died in the holds in the 40 days required to complete repairs. They got a seaman’s grave in the harbour of Makassar. Only 327 POWs survived when the ship reached Surabaya on 26 November 1944. They were transported by train to the Kampong Makassar camp in Batavia (Meester Cornelis), and arrived on 28 November 1944.

Oryoku Maru was a 7,363-ton passenger cargo liner transporting 1,620 survivors of the Bataan Death March, Corregidor and other battles. She left Manila on 13 December 1944, and over the next two days was bombed and strafed by U.S. planes. About 270 died aboard ship. Some died from suffocation or dehydration. Others were killed in the attack or drowned while escaping the sinking ship. A colonel, in his official report, wrote:Many men lost their minds and crawled about in the absolute darkness armed with knives, attempting to kill people in order to drink their blood or armed with canteens filled with urine and swinging them in the dark. The hold was so crowded and everyone so interlocked with one another that the only movement possible was over the heads and bodies of others. After Oryoku Maru sank in Subic Bay in December 1944, Enoura Maru was bombed in the harbor of Takao in January 1945.

Brazil Maru transported the last surviving Allied POWs to Moji, Japan. There the Japanese medics were shocked at the wasted condition of the POWs and used triage to divide them. The 110 most severe cases were taken to a primitive military hospital in Kokura where 73 died within a month. Four other groups were sent to Fukuoka POW camps 1, 3, 4 and 17. Of 549 men alive when the ship docked, only 372 survived the war. Some eventually went to a POW camp in Jinsen, Korea, where they were given light duty, mainly sewing garments for the Japanese Army.