by Bruce Gamble
As there is a total of 1,053 persons involved, it is expected that some time will elapse before all names are available, but next of kin can be assured that names will be progressively released as they become available in Australia…
These servicemen and civilians, who died in such a tragic manner, have undoubtedly given their lives in defense of Australia just as surely as those who died face to face with the enemy. To their next of kin the Commonwealth Government extends its deepest sympathy.
With amazing efficiency, the army delivered telegrams to some bereaved families that same day. At first the messages were neatly typed, but soon the telegraph offices were overwhelmed. Most of the subsequent messages were scribbled by hand with nearly identical wording: “IT IS WITH DEEP REGRET THAT I HAVE TO INFORM YOU THAT ______________ BECAME MISSING ON 1ST JULY 1942 AND IS FOR OFFICIAL PURPOSES PRESUMED TO BE DEAD AND DESIRE TO CONVEY TO YOU THE PROFOUND SYMPATHY OF THE MINISTER FOR THE ARMY.”
The story hit the newspapers on October 6, after which a backlash of angry questions and finger-pointing quickly followed. Not surprisingly, the conduct of the Japanese POW Information Bureau led to accusations of cover-ups and conspiracies. Even worse, the general lack of information left many people asking questions that could never be answered.
The telegrams themselves, so bluntly worded, devastated the lives of literally thousands of wives, children, sweethearts, parents, and friends. And in most cases, that was all they received. There was no sense of closure, nothing to cling to except fleeting memories about the men who would never return.
In Skenes Creek, Florence Thurst had only a few keepsakes by which to remember James, her strong and quiet son. She had a tiny gold locket that contained two photos: one of Jim, the other of his younger brother Bruce. The latter had come home after fighting in the wretched jungles of the Markham Valley in New Guinea as a commando, but even his safe return did not salve Florence’s broken heart. Before the war she had lost her husband in a bizarre accident, and now fate had taken her eldest son. To make matters worse, she never received so much as a penny of pension after he was declared dead. Jim had sent her a portion of his army pay every month, but never filled out the paperwork for an official allotment. Florence, who lived to be ninety, loathed Australia for the rest of her years.
Every family associated with the tragedy was deeply affected. Because no one knew exactly what had happened, the loved ones could only speculate. Inevitably they wondered about the last moments for the men trapped aboard the Montevideo Maru, and such dark thoughts are poisonous. To this day, family members are tormented by uncertainties and unanswerable questions. The emotional scars will remain as long as there are descendants still alive to mourn the victims.
Thankfully, the government did take permanent steps to honor the men from Lark Force who gave their lives. In 1945, the Army Graves Service dedicated an extensive war memorial at Bita Paka. Known today as the Rabaul Memorial, the cemetery features a broad expanse of lawn bordered by flowering shrubs, with headstones for the Allied servicemen buried there. A huge bronze plaque lists those whose bodies were never recovered, including the men aboard the Montevideo Maru and others who simply vanished in the jungles of New Britain.
Across Australia, certain individuals from Lark Force are perpetually remembered by their communities. In particular, a number of memorials have been erected over the years in Brunswick and Melbourne for the Salvation Army bandsmen. Arthur Gullidge, whose compositions are still played, is honored by the Australian military through the Gullidge Award, presented annually to the top apprentice at the Defence Force School of Music.
Perhaps the most poignant event to honor the lost lives occurred at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on July 1, 2002. Standing alongside the Roll of Honor, where the names of more than one hundred thousand war dead appear on a series of bronze panels, historian Ian Hodges described the role of Lark Force and the events that led to the tragic sinking. His presentation concluded with the words “As we stand here today on the sixtieth anniversary of the loss of the Montevideo Maru and look at the names of those who perished on that ship—and not forgetting that the civilians who died are not listed here—we should remember that sixty years ago today Australia experienced its worst maritime disaster. Almost twice as many Australians lost their lives in one night as did in the ten years of the Vietnam War. They, and the families and friends who endured years of not knowing their fate, deserve to be remembered.”
IT IS VITAL TO RECOGNIZE ALL OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF LARK FORCE, if for no better reason than to learn from the mistakes that were made at several levels, and to avoid repeating such tragic circumstances in the future.
Confident that they would be relieved within a year, that “great band of boys” arrived on New Britain in 1941 with great enthusiasm. Instead, they were abandoned by their own government. And within six months of the fall of Rabaul, 75 percent of the garrison was dead. Almost two hundred died at the hands of the Japanese—either through outright murder or by callous treatment as POWs—while dozens of others died by agonizing degrees in the merciless wasteland of the jungle. But those unfortunate statistics pale in comparison to the loss of more than a thousand souls aboard the Montevideo Maru. The sinking continues to rank as the worst maritime disaster in Australian history, and the fact that the ship was disemboweled by an American torpedo is the crudest twist of all.
When the Montevideo Maru slid beneath the waves in the middle of the night, the heart and soul of Lark Force went with it. Thus ended one of the most tragic events of the Pacific war—and one of Australia’s darkest hours.
EPILOGUE
Thanks to the Roll of Honor and other memorials, the men who died aboard the Montevideo Maru will not soon be forgotten—but neither can they rest in peace. Too many controversies and suggestions of conspiracy surround the disaster. Some have been answered, but others refuse to go away. Each time a new question is raised, the families of the dead must endure another round of heartache and uncertainty.
The controversies are divided into three main categories. First, some people believe the Montevideo Maru never existed. The story of its sinking, they say, was manufactured by the Japanese in order to conceal the massacre of the missing POWs and internees. Second, there are suggestions that a few prisoners actually survived the sinking and were taken to Japan, where they later died. Lastly, the various documents related to the sinking contain some discrepancies.
As to the first theory, there is no solid evidence to support the speculation that more than a thousand POWs and internees were massacred or died somewhere other than aboard the Montevideo Maru. Certainly the Japanese committed horrendous atrocities, yet it is highly unlikely that they would eliminate so many individuals—all potential laborers—so early in the war. Captives represented a cheap work force and were transported by the shipload to distant shores. In his extensively researched book, Death on the Hellships, author Gregory Michno identified 134 different vessels which made a total of 156 voyages with an aggregate of more than 126,000 POWs. Not all of them made it to their intended destination. The Montevideo Maru was the first of at least fifteen such vessels sunk inadvertently by the Allies. The most tragic episode occurred in 1944, when the Junyo Maru was torpedoed with the loss of 6,520 POWs. Throughout the Pacific war, more than 21,000 prisoners lost their lives aboard the hellships.
Secondly, the Montevideo Maru was real—of that there is no doubt. The ship was built for the Osaka Shosen Kaisha line and sailed between Asia and South American cities in the late 1920s and 1930s, a time when thousands of agricultural workers left Japan because of a recession. Prewar photographs, brochures, and sailing schedules show ample confirmation of the handsome ship’s existence.
Also, the evidence that the Sturgeon sank the Montevideo Maru is overwhelming. The official report by the Imperial Navy states that the ship was attacked at latitude 18.40N, longitude 119.31E, and the position recorded in the Sturgeon’s war diary is 18.37N, 119.29E, a difference of only thr
ee miles. Prior to their fateful encounter, the two vessels had crossed thousands of miles of ocean over a combined total of thirty-three days, and they were more than two miles apart at the time of the torpedo attack. Not only does this account for most of the variation in latitude and longitude, it also reveals that the plotting accuracy by both crews was remarkable.
Furthermore, the Sturgeon’s crew recorded the time of the attack as 0229 local on July 1, 1942, while the crew of the Montevideo Maru logged the event at 0326. The latter followed Japanese Standard Time, which was one hour ahead of local time, meaning the ships’ clocks were actually within three minutes of each other.
Regarding the known discrepancies, one of the most significant is that the Sturgeon’s crew heard a single explosion, while the Imperial Navy report claimed that two torpedoes hit the ship’s starboard side. The accumulated evidence suggests strongly that the submariners were correct. During several previous attacks, Lieutenant Commander Wright and his crew noted that the torpedoes which missed the target would eventually explode, presumably because the warheads crushed under intense pressure as they sank into the depths. On July 1, three distinct explosions were heard several minutes after the torpedoes were fired at the Montevideo Maru, accounting for three misses. Also, in contrast to the Sturgeon’s detailed logbook, the Japanese report was based on information pieced together from different survivors. Undoubtedly there were variations among the eyewitness statements. The crew probably heard two detonations, but the second can be attributed to the explosion of the fuel-oil tank. Half empty after eight days at sea, the compartment and its contents would have been highly volatile.
Two specific references to the ruptured tank appear in Japanese accounts. First, the Imperial Navy report stated that the ship’s engine room was flooded by fuel oil, forcing the crew to shut down the engines. The second reference came to light decades after the sinking, when a Japanese merchant sailor revealed information about the Montevideo Maru’s final minutes: “When I got up on deck,” stated seaman Yoshiaki Yamaji, “the ship was leaning to starboard. People were jumping into the water. Thick oil was spreading across the sea. There were loud noises… metal wrenching, furniture crashing, people screaming. I have not been able to forget the death cries.”
Yamaji was eighty-one years old when interviewed in 2003 for an investigative report by Australian television. If indeed a former crewmember, he is the only survivor to speak publicly about the disaster since the war.
Interestingly, while some of Yamaji’s recollections seem authentic, others seem less credible. For starters, the basis for his appearance on television was his allegation that he observed many Australian POWs in the water that night. He claimed they were holding onto firewood, which by itself is logical: there would have been firewood stacked on the main deck for heating the cook-pots. Yamaji also claimed that he was “told by an official of the company” that the POWs had been picked up by a Japanese warship and were taken to the city of Kobe.
The account might have seemed plausible had Yamaji stopped there; however, he went on to reminisce about the POWs in a manner that was both maudlin and highly questionable. “They were singing songs,” he said. “I was particularly impressed when they began singing Auld Lang Syne as a tribute to their dead colleagues. Watching that, I learned that Australians have big hearts.”
In the minds of military experts, Yamaji damaged his credibility with that particular description, which sounds not only fanciful and sentimental but contradicts his earlier statement. It also defies logic. Men who go into the water from a ship with a ruptured fuel tank find themselves struggling in thick, slimy oil. No matter how calm the surface of the South China Sea might have been on that particular night, the water was churned by men trying to get away from the ship, lest it pull them under. Therefore, whether they were Australian or Japanese, the men in the water would have been choking and retching on caustic bunker fuel, not singing.
Of even greater significance, there is no evidence to corroborate Yamaji’s claim that POWs were rescued and taken to Japan. Warships that were designated as escorts, unless attached to the Combined Fleet or particular Battle Forces, were assigned to specific defense zones. They would not have ventured outside their zone without good reason, the delivery of POW survivors to Japan not being one of them. Thus, any “rescued” POWs would have been delivered only as far as the nearest suitable base, then transferred to another ship for transportation to Japan. This would have required documentation between the various military and government bureaus involved, both at the transshipment point and eventually in Japan. Furthermore, numerous military and civilian eyewitnesses would have seen the POWs.
In the estimation of maritime expert Peter Cundall, the suggestion that the POWs were saved by a warship smacks of face-saving on Yamaji’s part. “It implies to me that he was aware the POWs had been left behind, and perhaps was trying to assuage guilt by suggesting they might have been rescued,” Cundall says. “The creation of special camps would have been necessary, again generating records and reports. Even allowing for the fact that many records were destroyed at war’s end and others lost through bombing and maladministration, it seems inconceivable that no record exists of any survivors, unless you discard the conspiracy theories and return to the notion that there were no POW survivors.”
Even if some Australians did manage to escape from the holds of the Montevideo Maru before it sank—a remote possibility at best—they were seventy miles from the nearest land. They had no lifeboat, and their physical condition was poor. All of the available evidence suggests that the POWs drowned that night, a position accepted officially by the Australian government.
Another debated issue concerns the actions of various Japanese agencies. According to the records discovered after the war by Major Williams, the Imperial Navy notified the Osaka Shosen Kaisha line of the sinking on July 20, 1942, but did not forward the particulars to the Prisoner of War Information Bureau for nearly six months. Some people believe the long delay is evidence of a cover-up, but the circumstances can be easily explained. Less than a month prior to the sinking of the Montevideo Maru, the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers and hundreds of veteran aviators at Midway, a blow from which the Imperial Navy never recovered. Furthermore, the heavy losses continued: in the merchant fleet alone more than 240 vessels were sunk by the end of 1942. No wonder the sinking of one particular ship went unreported for months.
The bigger question is why the POW Information Bureau failed to notify the International Red Cross about the tragedy. Once again, there are logical explanations, the principal reason being bureaucratic ineptitude. Simply put, the agency was notoriously inefficient. The Japanese were utterly unprepared for the tens of thousands of Allied prisoners captured during the first months of the Pacific war. One infamous result was the death march forced upon 72,000 American and Filipino captives from Bataan, mainly because the Japanese lacked motor transportation to move them almost a hundred miles to the nearest suitable prison. The POWs had to walk the first sixty miles to a railhead as well as the last ten miles to the prison, the former Camp O’Donnell. En route, approximately seven hundred Americans and five thousand Filipinos died, and hundreds more succumbed later to starvation and disease inside the camp.
As for the Montevideo Maru, the POW Information Bureau repeatedly ignored inquiries from the International Red Cross regarding the prisoners. After the war, Lieutenant General Tamura explained that his personnel were forced to spend all their time notifying the IRC and other agencies about “living war prisoners,” the implication being that information regarding dead POWs was not forwarded as a matter of policy. Perhaps the bureau wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having to publicly acknowledge the loss of the Montevideo Maru. Another distinct possibility is that personnel within the agency were involved in the lucrative black market, selling rice and other supplies earmarked for POWs. The theft of supplies was rampant, and it’s entirely conceivable that members of the bureau received kickbacks in ex
change for falsely keeping 1,050-plus deceased prisoners on the books for three additional years.
In late 1945, after twice failing to meet the conditions set by Major Williams for a formal apology, Lieutenant General Tamura signed a memorandum that stated: “Information of the loss of 1,053 Prisoners of War and Civilian Internees has not been forwarded to the Australian Authorities. This is a sheer dereliction on the part of this Bureau to have failed to advise the Australian Government on the subject in question. This Bureau sincerely expresses its deep regret and hereby tenders profound apology.”
If Tamura thought the apology would get him off the hook with the Australians, he was correct—but he did not go unpunished. The United States separately investigated his lack of cooperation with the Red Cross and sentenced him to eight years of hard labor.
IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, TWO POINTS SEEM INARGUABLE: THE MONTEVIDEO MARU was torpedoed, and there were Australian prisoners aboard at the time. Both points, established through a variety of sources, are backed by multiple eyewitness accounts.
Ultimately, readers must decide for themselves what they believe regarding the disaster and the alleged conspiracies. Wherever the truth lies, the men who were lost must be allowed to rest in peace. Soon enough, their entire generation will exist only in memory.
NOTES
The following pages contain abbreviated citations to the various quotations and other references found in this book. A complete bibliography is provided separately. Most of the official documents, including reports issued by the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS) and some Japanese records, were duplicated at the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra. Other important references, private diaries, and unpublished manuscripts were obtained from the Lark Force Association. Documents related to the USS Sturgeon were found at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. The Japanese Monographs were copied at the Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. The Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, provided the U.S. Army Air Force materials. Microfilm of the 1942 Osaka Mainichi Daily News was loaned by the Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia. Published books and articles, copies of military bulletins, and other named sources cited are in the author’s collection.