Oryoku Maru

Oryoku Maru

Oryoku Maru (鴨緑丸^?) was a Japanese passenger cargo ship. In World War II, Oryoku Maru was used as a troop transport and prisoners of war (POWs) transport ship (Hell ship). She left Manila on December 13, 1944, with 1620 POWs, mostly American, packed in the holds. 1900 Japanese civilians & military personnel occupied the cabins.^[1] As it neared the naval base at Olongapo in Subic Bay, US Navy planes from the USS Hornet attacked the unmarked ship causing it to sink on December 15. About 100 men died aboard the ship from suffocation or dehydration during the two nights aboard while nearly 200 others were killed in the bombing or shot in the water as they tried to escape.

The survivors of the sinking were held for several days in an open tennis court at Olongapo Naval Base. While there, the prisoners were afforded no sanitary conditions whatsoever. Prisoners experienced severe mistreatment, and several deaths occurred. The group of prisoners were then moved to San Fernando, Pampanga. While in San Fernando, 15 weak or wounded prisoners were loaded on a truck, believing they would be taken to Bilibid for treatment. It was revealed in the 1946 war crimes trial that they were taken to a nearby cemetery, beheaded, and dumped into a mass grave. The prisoners were then transported by train to San Fernando, La Union. There about 1000 of the survivors were loaded on another Japanese ship, the Enoura Maru, while the rest boarded the smaller Brazil Maru. Both ships reached Takao (Kaohsiung) harbor in Taiwan on New Year's Day, where the smaller group of prisoners was transferred from Brazil Maru to Enoura Maru and 37 British and Dutch were taken ashore. However, on January 9, the Enoura Maru was bombed and disabled while in harbor, killing about 350 men. The survivors were put aboard the Brazil Maru which arrived in Moji, Japan on January 29, 1945. Only 550 of the 900+ who sailed from Taiwan were still alive. 150 more men died in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea in the coming months leaving only 403 survivors of the original 1620 to be liberated from camps in Kyushu, Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan in August and September 1945.

Junsaburo Toshino, former Lieutenant and Guard Commandant aboard the "Hell Ship" was found guilty of murdering and supervising the murder of at least 16 men and sentenced to death as Class B war criminal at Yokohama. Shuske Wada, whose charges paralleled those of Toshino, was the official interpreter for the guard group. (Both Toshino and Wada had supervised the San Fernando murders.) Wada was found guilty of causing the deaths of numerous American and Allied Prisoners of War by neglecting to transmit to his superiors requests for adequate quarters, food, drinking water and medical attention. Wada was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor. All other guards received long prison sentences. The captain of the ship, Shin Kajiyama, was acquitted "as he had no chance to prevent any atrocities."^[2]

See also

• List of Japanese hell ships
• Jefferson W. Speck -- survivor of the attack

References

1. ^ 鴨緑丸 by Museum of Japanese Merchant Ship
2. ^ Piccigallo, Philip; The Japanese on Trial; Austin 1979; ISBN 0-292-78033-8; p 83-90

• George Weller, First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), pp. 177–239.
• Roster of POWs aboard Oryoku Maru. Prepared by James Erickson

• General Headquarters Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Legal Section, File No. 014.13 Public Relations Informational Summary No. 574. Tokyo, Japan 9 May 1947

External links

• Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society: The Story of the Enoura Maru and the Men Who Died