Plan to recover 828 PoWs from wreck of the Lisbon Maru
Didi Tang, Beijing
April 16 2018, 5:00pm, The Times
An American sailor’s sketch of the ship sinking. Doomed PoWs were heard singing It’s a Long Way to Tipperary
The horrific story of 1,800 British prisoners of war battened into three cargo holds of a torpedoed Japanese transport ship is so little told that the dead are known by historians as the forgotten boys.
Some scrambled to freedom even as the Japanese guards shot at them. Many could not. In one hold, hundreds lost their chance of survival when the only ladder snapped. Survivors later recounted hearing the singing of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary as the boat sank.
Now a Chinese-American businessman is looking to bring the remains of the 828 who drowned in the Lisbon Maru to the surface. Fang Li, 64, has embarked on a quest to find offspring and relatives of the victims who went down with the 7,000-ton vessel in 1942 in East China Sea.
He wants to remember the dead, and to know if there is support for the soldiers’ remains to be retrieved. “It’s time the hundreds of souls that have been detained for nearly 80 years go home,” Mr Fang said. “They spent the last moments of their lives trying to break out, but after so many years, they remain incarcerated.”
A survivor of the atrocity has spoken against the plan, saying the site should be left alone as a war grave. However, Mr Fang has been encouraged after family members of those on board contacted him and expressed their wish that the remains be repatriated. Many of the victims were too young to have a family when they died and thus have no direct descendants . Mr Fang is looking for great nephews or great nieces.
He first heard about the ill-fated Lisbon Maru in 2013, when his studio, Laurel Films, was producing a movie in the eastern Chinese archipelago of Zhoushan. Local fishermen told him a sunken Japanese boat from the Second World War was resting on the seabed off the islets.
Mr Fang said that he had a keen interest in the war and was surprised he had never heard about it. His interest piqued, he studied the history of the Lisbon Maru. It was transporting to labour camps in Japan British soldiers captured after the surrender of Hong Kongwhen a torpedo from a US submarine hit it on the morning of October 1, 1942 and the ship began to take on water.
To prevent revolt Japanese guards placed wooden planks and a tarpaulin over the hatches of the holds but the PoWs forced their way out and the guards opened fire. The bloodshed on deck halted when Chinese fishermen arrived and started pulling the men out of water. One of the fishermen, now 94, is still alive.
Mr Fang commissioned underwater probes that captured images of the 140m vessel. He was “100 per cent” convinced that he had located the steel-hulled Lisbon Maru.
After a chance encounter with a British scientist in Berlin Mr Fang suggested that the remains of the British soldiers should be repatriated, consistent with the Chinese belief that the dead should always return to their roots upon death.
Dennis Morley, 97, believed to be the last British survivor of the atrocity, however, spoke against the plan. “It’s a war grave and that should be left,” Mr Morley, a private in the Royal Scots during the wartime, told The Sunday Timeslast year.
Mr Fang has since received a message from a British woman whose grandfather, Montague Glister, was lost with the Lisbon Maru. She said that her family would very much like to see the remains of her grandfather returned.
Without clear consensus Mr Fang decided that he should first reach out to more people and make a documentary to honour the dead. The film crew arrived in the United Kingdom last weekend to meet anyone who has knowledge about the Lisbon Maru’s victims. “With only two eyewitnesses left we would lose the last opportunity to tell their stories and to remember them if we don’t act now,” he said. “They at least deserve a decent memorial.”
How The Times reported the sinking in 1942
LOST JAPANESE PRISON SHIP | SURVIVORS’ STORIES OF INHUMANITY
CHUNGKING, Dec. 22.-The British Embassy here issued to-day the first full story of the torpedoing of the Japanese prison-ship off the Chekiang coast three months ago, when hundreds of British prisoners of war from Hong-kong lost their lives.
The facts have reached Chungking from three Britons who were on board the ship - Mr. JC Fallace, formerly chief inspector of the Tientsin Police; Mr. WC Johnstone, formerly accountant of the Shanghai Municipal Police; and Mr. AJW Evans, of the British-American Tobacco Company. The three men are now on their way to India.
As internees in the Shamshuipo camp at Kowloon, the mainland part of Hong-kong territory, they left Hong-kong on September 27, on board a Japanese merchant ship with 2,000 officers and men, both naval and military, of the former garrison. All the prisoners were accommodated in the holds. The torpedoing occurred on the morning of October 1.
That evening the hatch boards were closed. Two of the prisoners died during the night. Later, someone removed the tarpaulins from the hatches, enabling the prisoners to force their way to the deck. The stern of the ship was then submerged, resting on the bottom, with the bow high out of the water. The Japanese then abandoned the vessel. Hundreds of men jumped into the sea and started swimming towards five or six Japanese auxiliaries cruising slowly between the ship and the land, which was visible some distance away. Some men in the water were shot at by the Japanese. Suddenly the ship sank, so that only the crosstrees of the mast remained above water. The auxiliaries picked up a few men, but made no effort to save the vast majority of those in the water.
The three men said that they passed close to one of the auxiliaries, but their cries for help were ignored. They decided to strike out for land. After three hours in the water they were picked up by Chinese fishermen, who put them ashore. Six days later they met some Chinese irregulars, who helped them on their way to free China.
Tokyo announced on October 7 that more than 1,800 British and Australian war prisoners were on board the Lisbon Maru, of 7,152 tons, when she was torpedoed and sunk “by an American submarine” on October 1. Of these, “more than 900 were saved and taken to Japan.” When the ship was hit, the Japanese agency said, the prisoners were at roll call.
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