The wreck of a Japanese ship that sank in 1942 after it was torpedoed by an American submarine has been found, the Australian government said on Saturday. The ship was carrying hundreds of prisoners of war, most of them Australian, who all died, and the discovery resolves a painful episode in that country’s wartime history.
A U.S. Navy submarine attacked the ship, the Montevideo Maru, in July 1942 as it traveled unescorted from Rabaul, a port in the Australian territory of New Guinea that had been captured by Japan earlier that year, to China’s Hainan Island, which Japan had invaded in 1939.
The ship had no markings indicating that it was carrying prisoners of war and sank carrying more than 1,000 prisoners from about 16 nations, most of them Australian service members. It is the largest loss of life of Australians at sea.
The wreck was spotted this month on the seafloor northwest of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines, according to Fugro, a company based in the…
This article was written by Mike Ives and originally published on www.nytimes.com