Death on the Hellships. Gregory F. Michno
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
© 2001 by Gregory F. Michno
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2016.
ISBN: 978-1-68247-025-1 (eBook)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Michno, Gregory, 1948–
Death on the hellships: prisoners at sea in the Pacific war / Gregory F. Michno.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. World War, 1939–1945—Prisoners and prisons, Japanese. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Atrocities. 3. Prisoners of war—Transportation—Pacific Ocean. 4. Japan. Kaigun—Prisons—History—20th century. I. Title.
D805.J3 M52 2001
940.54'7252—dc21
2001016409
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First printing
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1942
RELOCATING THE POWS
1943
AN UNEASY STASIS
1944
FLEEING FROM THE ALLIES
1945
LAST OF THE HELLSHIPS
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX: HELLSHIP VOYAGES AND POW DEATHS
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF HELLSHIPS
SUBJECT INDEX
Errata
Page 19, lines 5–6. For not until Lieutenant Colonel Ramsay pleaded for them to be allowed to use, read not until Lieutenant Colonel Ramsay pleaded for them, were they allowed to use
Page 24, line 19. For sixteen hundred, read fifteen hundred
Page 30, lines 30–31. For the last time a U.S. army had surrendered, read the last time a large army of Americans had surrendered
Page 36, line 19. For 192d, read 192nd
Page 93, line 23. For hold, read ship
Page 175, line 26. For possible, read possibly
Page 185, line 2. For strewn with about with, read strewn about with
Page 265, line 12. For slower as on, read slower on
Page 314, entry 17. For Hioki Maru, read Hiyoki Maru
Page 327, note 5. The following passage is part of note 8: Colonel Bogey’s March had ribald lyrics, enthusiastically sung by the British soldiers. Its tune, however, was only whistled as the theme song in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai.
Page 365, Ultra entry. For Awe Maru’s, read Awa Maru’s
Page 366, Zuiho entry. For light cruiser, read light carrier
World War II was arguably the single most important event in the lives of millions of men and women who survived its horrors. It has provided the raw material for thousands of books, many of which were based on the written accounts and memoirs of those who experienced the cataclysm firsthand. Soldiers and sailors, from enlisted men to career officers, have given us numerous combat stories, their narratives running the gamut of wartime emotions, from boredom to terror, from camaraderie to glory.
A significant number of survivors, however, have been unwilling or unable to share their experiences. The majority of the returned prisoners-of-war (POWs) have remained silent. With the exception of a number who made their stories public shortly after the war’s end, POWs have not readily spoken of their ordeal. The onus of having been captured played a part in their silence, as did the unwillingness to relive a bad experience. In some cases post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological condition that affected many who experienced the brutalities of war, limited their ability to communicate. Many felt guilty about surviving; others were ashamed of what they had been forced to do in order to survive. They blocked out painful recollections. This “psychic numbing” prevented survivors from talking about their experiences for years after the war (American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 236–37, 248–50).
It is only within the last few decades that many surviving ex-POWs have finally been able to tell their story. Once the dams broke, a deluge of words poured forth. One ex-prisoner, Robert E. Haney, likened his postwar life to being a tormented, caged dragon. He set up barriers against anything that would remind him of the past. But, he lamented, time did not heal all wounds; it only buried them in very shallow graves (Haney, Caged Dragons, 245).
As Haney’s book illustrates, prisoners of the Japanese suffered unusual brutality. Though Japan had signed the Hague Convention of 1907, which called for humane treatment of POWs, it refused to ratify the Geneva convention of 1929, and its prisoners suffered the brunt of this decision. Recently published POW accounts, including Manny Lawton’s Some Survived, Preston John Hubbard’s Apocalypse Undone, and Van Waterford’s Prisoners of the Japanese (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1994), have detailed the ordeals of beatings, disease, and starvation, as well as the prisoners’ capture, daily camp life, and eventual rescue. The story of the surrender of Singapore has been told. The fight for Bataan and its attendant Death March has been recounted many times. In contrast, the story of the prisoners who experienced life and death on the Japanese hellships has had less exposure. Some books acknowledge these prisoners, but with no more than a paragraph or, at most, a chapter. (Waterford has a chapter on the hellships, Daws devotes a score of pages to hellships in Prisoners of the Japanese [New York: William Morrow, 1994], and Kerr, in Surrender and Survival, addresses hellships but concentrates on the American experience in the Philippines.) The hellships have not yet had their own story, an incongruous situation given the great number of prisoners who have claimed that their days on the hellships were the worst of their lives. Death on the Hellships is the first book to concentrate on this aspect of the prisoner-of-war experience.
Another comparatively unknown part of the hellship saga is the submarine connection. Thousands of POWs who had survived prison camps on land lost their lives at sea when the Japanese ships they were on were torpedoed by Allied submarines. Chillingly, this “friendly