Daily Event for September 18

September 18, 1944: PoW's in World War II had as much chance of being killed in action as soldiers still fighting on any of the several fronts. Today is the anniversary of the sinking of one of these PoW ships, by a British submarine. Off Sumatra the "hell ship" Junyo Maru was packed with Dutch, British, Australian and American PoW's. It was also carrying 4,200 slave laborers the Japanese had captured. The barbaric conditions on board this old worn out ship can not be understood by anyone who was not there, and most would not survive the voyage.

HMS Tradewind located the Junyo Maru about 15:45 and prepared to fire at her not knowing she was carrying fellow countrymen. This was because the Japanese did not mark prisoner ships. It is worthy of noting that the Admiralty and the U.S. Navy were aware of these ships because they had broken the Japanese codes. The information however was not passed on to the commanders of the submarines and caused an untold number of Allied deaths. One must take into consideration the following. If every Japanese and German convoy was attacked just after leaving port the enemy would assume that their code had been broken and would alter further transmissions. This would be a decision made at the highest levels of Government and would be agonizing to make. Never the less such decisions were made and the results were devastating to the men in the ships.

HMS Tradewind fired four torpedoes at the unmarked merchant ship at 15:51 and one minute and thirty seconds later the first one hit the ship. The second followed fifteen seconds later. Tradewind did a crash dive, but was depth charged about nine minuets later. At 16:13 the crew of the Tradewind could clearly hear the Junyo Maru break up and sink. They had no way of knowing the carnage that they had just inflicted. In total over five thousand six hundred of the PoW's and slave laborers were killed. Those that were rescued (723) were picked up by the Japanese and taken to PoW camps and many of these men died there.
© 2005 Michael W. Pocock
MaritimeQuest.com


HMS Tradewind.