Final Voyage (14 page)

Two torpedoes hit the
Laconia
, and the old ship's hull buckled, rivets bursting out of their seams at such speed they killed people as if they were bullets. The
Laconia
stopped dead in the water immediately and began listing to starboard, settling heavily by the stern. Below decks some Polish soldiers refused to unlock the pens holding the Italian prisoners. Elsewhere soldiers took mercy on the enemy, resulting in hundreds of Italian soldiers storming through the ship in a running battle with British soldiers who were armed, but who were outnumbered considerably. The
Laconia
had had enough lifeboats for everyone on board, including the prisoners, but some of the 32 boats had been destroyed in the attack, and others could not be launched as the
Laconia
rose further and further towards the vertical. Of more than 20 that got away, most were half empty whilst others sank through overcrowding.

When the U-boat crew heard the
Laconia
's distress call they realised she was not the troop transport they had assumed she was. The U-boat surfaced, broadcasting its own position in English and requesting assistance from any ships in the area. Drifting in the middle of the Atlantic, even the survivors who made it into the lifeboats had little chance of being rescued. The
Laconia
sank just after 9pm, by which point hundreds had been pulled from the water. The German submariners took as many below as the U-boat could fit, then allowed the rest to huddle on deck. The Germans gave them dry clothes, hot tea and bread. Towing four lifeboats behind, U-156 continued on the surface to rendezvous with several Vichy French ships. They did not get far before an American B-24 Liberator plane spotted this inexplicable convoy. Though the
Germans signalled for assistance, and had stretched a white sheet painted with the sign of the Red Cross across the deck, American planes from the Ascension Islands were ordered to attack. One bomb hit one of the lifeboats under tow.

The U-boat captain had no choice but to abandon the survivors of the
Laconia
. He gave them fresh water, then ordered those on deck back into the sea, and cast the lifeboats adrift. Then U-156 dived slowly, so as not to drag those in the water down. Over half of those who had survived the sinking of the
Laconia
died before the Vichy French ships picked them up. After the incident, Kriegsmarine commander-in-chief Admiral Doenitz issued the
Laconia
Order, which forbade U-boat captains from doing anything to help survivors of their attacks. This paved the way for unrestricted submarine warfare, a policy that Germany's enemies also adopted. The actions of U-156's captain could have set the sinking of the
Laconia
apart from the other maritime tragedies of the Second World War. Instead they inspired a diktat that ensured there would be many more.

Between 1942 and 1945, the Japanese transported over 125,000 Allied prisoners of war and Indonesian slave labourers around the Pacific on vessels that became known as ‘hellships'. These hellships were usually old, slow, medium-sized freighters unsuited to the task of carrying thousands of men. The only concession the Japanese made towards converting them was to build bamboo scaffolding in the holds, adding a split level so that another layer of
men could be packed in on top of those below. A ship like the
Junyo Maru
– a 5,065-ton merchantman, only 405ft (123m) long – had to carry upwards of 5,000 prisoners. Packed into the holds, the low bamboo ceiling prevented them from standing up, and the number of people in there with them prevented them from lying down too. Men spent entire journeys kneeling or squatting because there wasn't even room to sit. Sometimes those journeys lasted for weeks.

Predictably, conditions in the holds quickly became appalling. Even in cooler months the heat inside the almost airless holds was oppressive. In summer it became lethal. The floor of one of the holds on the
Junyo Maru
was sticky with black resin. On a previous trip the freighter had carried a cargo of sugar that had melted and congealed in the heat. The Japanese guards only let a small number of prisoners up on deck to use the toilets – wooden boxes hanging over the side of the ship – at a time, and queuing to go up took hours. The sick, the injured and those weakened by a diet of thin tea, watery stew, rice and boiled vegetables couldn't make it up on deck. Unsanitary conditions prevailed, and the smell was almost unbearable. Many men had boarded with malaria, but dysentery also became rife. In the permanent semi-darkness of holds lit only by faint blue-painted bulbs, it was sometimes hours before anyone noticed yet another death.

Even in cooler months the heat inside the almost airless holds was oppressive. In summer it became lethal.

The prisoners occupied themselves by sharing whatever books they had brought with them or playing card games. Some kept their spirits up by devising daring fantasy plans
to take over the ships, using their numerical advantage to overwhelm their Japanese captors. Some hoped to sail into a storm that would cause the ship to founder so that they could either escape or die. Some imagined joining the queue to go up on deck and then letting themselves fall into the sea. Others wished one of their own submarines would spot the unmarked hellship and sink it. On 18th September 1944, that is what happened to the
Junyo Maru
.

By late summer 1944 it became clear that General Douglas MacArthur's forces would retake the Philippines. The Japanese began moving large numbers of prisoners away from the invading forces and to parts of Indonesia where they could shore up Japanese defences. The
Junyo Maru
set sail for Padang on the west coast of Sumatra with about 2,000 Dutch, British, Australian and American prisoners of war. They were joined by 4,200 Javanese slaves. Hellships often took such large labour forces to work on major projects, such as repairing bombed airstrips. The
Junyo Maru
's human cargo was intended to work on a new railway line across Sumatra that would improve Japan's coal supply line.

The hellship took only 15 minutes to sink against the sunset; time in which thousands of panicking prisoners trapped in the lethally overcrowded, swiftly flooding holds fought to climb up the only ladder to the top deck.

British submarine HMS
Tradewind
had a defective periscope and her radar wasn't working properly either, but neither would have made much difference to the
Junyo Maru
's fate. The Geneva Convention required ships to bear the Red Cross when they were carrying prisoners but hellships never did. The
Tradewind
fired four torpedoes
and hit the
Junyo Maru
with two of them. The hellship took only 15 minutes to sink against the sunset; time in which most of the Japanese escaped, but thousands of panicking prisoners trapped in the lethally overcrowded, swiftly flooding holds fought to climb up the only ladder to the top deck.

Of the more than 5,000 prisoners on board, only about 700 survived a night in the water to be picked up by a Japanese corvette and gunboat the next day. Hardly any of the Javanese survived. Most of them being unable to swim, they huddled at the bow until the
Junyo Maru
sank beneath them. Any relief the others felt at surviving the disaster would have been short lived. All of them went on to work on the railway as planned, working naked but for a loincloth 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for another 11 months in temperatures reaching 50°C (120°F). Fewer than 100 survived the war.

Over 21,000 men died on hellships between 1942 and 1945, and simply because of the number of prisoners crammed aboard, when the ships were targeted and sunk, their losses instantly became some of the deadliest maritime disasters in history, from the 1,540 who died aboard the
Koshu Maru
up to the 3,500 killed when American submarine USS
Rasher
sank the
Tango Maru
. Of all the prisoners of war who died in the Pacific during the Second World War, a third of them were killed by friendly fire at sea. For the US military, the worst single incident was the 24th October 1944 sinking of the
Arisan Maru
, on which 1,776 American prisoners were killed by USS
Shark
.

Most of those aboard the
Arisan Maru
had survived the Bataan Death March in 1942. Following the worst defeat
in American military history, almost 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners were marched nearly 100 miles (160km) through the jungle with only one meal in seven days, resulting in the deaths of thousands. Life in the now notorious camps awaiting them at the end of the march was no better, and men often volunteered for work details, not knowing about the hellships that would take them. The
Arisan Maru
left Manila in the Philippines for mainland Japan on 10th October 1944. She was one of the most densely packed of all the hellships. Men had to take it in shifts to sit down in the holds, which had three levels of bamboo shelves with only 3ft (1m) between them. Sailing through a typhoon, most of the prisoners became seasick. With rationed food only served on a first come first served basis, and cruel Japanese guards lowering buckets of urine rather than water, men licked the condensation from the hull to survive as the holds suffered temperatures in excess of 38°C (100°F), even at night.

Instead of abandoning ship many of the half-starved men stormed the galley, eating as much rice as they could find.

Their two-week ordeal ended when the
Arisan Maru
was spotted by the crew of the
Shark
, unaware that the unmarked freighter carried so many of their countrymen. The first torpedoes missed. Japanese soldiers and a couple of dozen prisoners who were on deck preparing a meal for the others saw the torpedo wakes pass in front of the ship. Three more followed, and they broke the back of the ship. As she buckled in the middle, the stern began to sink, but the bow – where most of the prisoners were – remained relatively level. The Japanese guards cut the rope ladders and locked the hatches on the
holds to preventing the prisoners escaping. Then they abandoned ship. The prisoners who had been on deck preparing the meal reopened the hatches and lowered ropes into the hold, but even after coming on deck nobody was in much of a hurry to jump overboard. The forward part of the ship seemed to be sinking so slowly that many hoped the Japanese would come back and repair the vessel. So instead of abandoning ship many of the half-starved men stormed the galley, eating as much rice as they could find. They also filled canteens with water before finally leaving the ship.

They were right to stay on board as long as possible. Even before the
Arisan Maru
sank, two hours after the attack, men had tried swimming over to other vessels in the convoy. The Japanese beat them back. As darkness fell, nearly two thousand men found themselves abandoned in increasingly rough waters, watching their last hope sail away into the night. Knowing that no American ships penetrated this deeply into Japanese waters, most simply gave up. Almost miraculously, however, nine men managed to survive. Four drifted through the night and were later picked up by other Japanese vessels. Five others climbed into an abandoned lifeboat and sailed for the Chinese coast, near which they encountered a Chinese junk. The men went on to be smuggled across China to a US airbase and were repatriated in time for Christmas. Back in America they told their stories from the beginning to a shocked American public that had thus far been largely oblivious to the cruelty of the Pacific war. Learning of the many atrocities, America could no longer be under any illusion as to whom she was fighting.

During the Second World War there was only one vessel ship sunk by US forces that the American government acknowledged they should never have sunk: the 11,249-ton
Awa Maru
. The 502ft (153m) liner had been used as a prisoner transport during 1944 but in 1945 it became a relief ship under the Red Cross banner. As the war turned against Japan, the Allies became increasingly concerned about the prisoners of war in Japanese custody. Through Swiss diplomats (Switzerland having remained as neutral as ever throughout the war), the US government came to an agreement with the Japanese – that they would not attack any ships carrying aid packages to Allied prisoners provided the Japanese informed them of the ships' routes in advance and used floodlights to identify the vessels on passage. The Japanese accepted the agreement not out of humanitarian concerns but because they saw how they could use it to their advantage. When the
Awa Maru
left Singapore on 28th March she not only carried supplies destined for the prison camps, but also 500 tons of munitions and enough crated parts to build 20 aircraft. Some of the 2,004 Japanese passengers on board were military experts too.

The
Queenfish
fired four torpedoes into the
Awa Maru,
which then sank in little over two minutes.

Carrying some aid for imprisoned Americans was meant to guarantee the safety of what would otherwise be a legitimate target. But on the night of 1st April the captain of the
Awa Maru
deviated from the route the Japanese authorities had given the Americans. In the foggy Taiwan Strait the
Awa Maru
was 11 miles off course and 18 miles
ahead of schedule. With near zero visibility the overloaded ship, sitting low in the water, looked like a destroyer to the radar operator on submarine USS
Queenfish
. The
Queenfish
fired four torpedoes into the
Awa Maru
, which then sank in little over two minutes. There was only one survivor, steward Kantora Shimoda, who had already survived three sinkings, and when picked up by the
Queenfish
he informed the Americans of their mistake. The
Queenfish
was ordered into Guam, where her commander was stripped of his command and court martialled. The US government feared what would happen to their prisoners if the Japanese abandoned the agreement. As well as acknowledging responsibility for the wrongful sinking, the US even offered the Japanese a replacement ship, but the matter of reparations was dropped following Japan's defeat.