The Hell Ships: Expanding the History Beyond Allied Prisoners of War

A recent article published by The Indo Project, titled The Hell Ships, presents a broad introduction to the Japanese prisoner and forced-labor transport system of the Second World War. Its most important contribution is its insistence that the history of the hellships cannot be understood solely through the experiences of Allied prisoners of war.

Alongside British, American, Australian, Dutch, and other Allied prisoners were vast numbers of Asian forced laborers known as romusha. Their experiences remain far less documented, although they may have constituted the majority of those transported—and killed—aboard many Japanese vessels.

The article also discusses several major hellship disasters, the continuing work of memorial and research organizations, and the 2026 identification of the wreck believed to be the Hōfuku Maru off Zambales in the Philippines.

This Hellships Memorial Foundation analysis examines the article’s value, its implications for future research, and several claims that require further documentation or more precise wording.

Summary of the Indo Project Article

The Indo Project describes the hellships as ordinary Japanese cargo and transport vessels used between 1942 and 1945 to move Allied POWs, civilian internees, and Asian forced laborers throughout Japan’s wartime empire.

These ships carried prisoners to Japan, Formosa, Korea, Manchuria, Burma, Sumatra, the Moluccas, and other locations where labor was needed for mines, railways, airfields, factories, docks, and military construction.

Conditions aboard the ships were frequently appalling. Prisoners and forced laborers were confined in overcrowded, poorly ventilated cargo holds with inadequate food, drinking water, sanitation, and medical care. Disease, dehydration, starvation, heat exhaustion, suffocation, violence, and neglect caused deaths even when ships completed their voyages.

The vessels generally carried no special marking identifying them as prisoner transports. Many also carried Japanese troops, equipment, or military supplies. Allied submarines and aircraft therefore attacked them as legitimate military targets without knowing that Allied prisoners and Asian forced laborers were confined below deck.

The article discusses several particularly destructive voyages, including those of the:

• Junyō Maru

• Lisbon Maru

• Rakuyō Maru

• Montevideo Maru

• Oryoku Maru

• Enoura Maru

• Brazil Maru

• Hōfuku Maru

It also identifies museums, archives, memorial associations, family organizations, and research groups working to preserve the history of the hellships.

The Article’s Most Important Contribution

The article’s strongest contribution is its section, “The Romusha: The Forgotten Majority.”

Public discussion of the hellships has traditionally concentrated on Allied military prisoners. That emphasis is understandable because POW records, survivor accounts, military reports, casualty files, and family organizations have made their stories more accessible.

The romusha present a different research problem.

Millions of people in the Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies were compelled into wartime labor under widely varying circumstances. Many were transported away from their home communities, including by sea. Records were frequently incomplete, inconsistent, locally maintained, destroyed, or never created.

Many romusha were identified only by partial names, places of origin, work groups, or numerical totals. Others disappeared without any surviving individual record. Literacy barriers, disrupted communities, postwar displacement, poverty, political upheaval, and the gradual loss of oral testimony further complicated efforts to document them.

The Indo Project argues that the romusha should not be treated as a footnote to Allied POW history. This is an important and necessary point.

On some ships—most notably the Junyō Maru—Asian forced laborers greatly outnumbered Allied prisoners. Any historical treatment that discusses only the POWs aboard such vessels presents an incomplete picture of the people transported and killed.

Why This Matters to the Hellships Memorial Foundation

The article presents several important considerations for the Foundation’s continuing research, memorial, and educational work.

1. The casualty record must extend beyond military POW lists

Military archives provide relatively structured information about Allied prisoners: names, ranks, service numbers, units, camps, transport movements, casualty status, and next-of-kin details.

Comparable records may not exist for many romusha. The absence of a complete name does not mean that the person did not exist or should not be represented.

Future databases and exhibitions should therefore distinguish among:

• Individually identified victims

• Partially identified individuals

• Persons appearing only in group or labor records

• Estimated but unnamed populations

• Conflicting casualty totals

• Numbers derived from postwar historical reconstruction

This approach would preserve the difference between documented identities and statistical estimates without allowing unnamed victims to disappear from the historical narrative.

2. POWs and forced laborers require connected but distinct treatment

Allied POWs and romusha sometimes experienced the same ships, attacks, deprivation, and loss of life. Their legal status, recruitment or coercion, documentation, treatment, and postwar recognition were nevertheless different.

They should be presented within the same overall history while avoiding the suggestion that their experiences were identical or interchangeable.

Future HMF educational material could include a dedicated section explaining:

• Who the romusha were

• How forced labor operated in the occupied Netherlands East Indies

• Why so few complete passenger lists survive

• Which hellships carried mixed populations

• How casualty estimates were calculated

• Why so many victims remain unnamed

3. Indonesian and Dutch-Indonesian partnerships are essential

The subject cannot be adequately researched through American, British, Australian, or Dutch military archives alone.

The Foundation should consider collaboration with Indonesian historians, universities, museums, genealogical groups, local archives, and Dutch-Indonesian heritage organizations. These partnerships could help locate regional records, family testimony, village histories, labor lists, photographs, and Indonesian-language research that are not represented in conventional Allied collections.

The Indo Project itself may be a valuable partner for outreach to families whose histories intersect with the hellship and forced-labor story.

The Article’s Treatment of the Hōfuku Maru

The Indo Project discusses the 2026 identification of the wreck believed to be the Hōfuku Maru off Zambales. It credits the Hellships Memorial Foundation and its research partners and connects the identification to renewed international attention toward maritime war graves.

The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands has stated that the wreck is highly likely to be the Hōfuku Maru. Its assessment refers to a combination of navigational analysis and archival, cartographic, and archaeological evidence.

This constitutes important independent governmental support for the identification. The careful phrase “highly likely,” however, should be retained unless further diagnostic evidence supports an unequivocal identification.

The Indo Project states that the wreck is a “protected maritime war grave.” This language requires clarification.

The Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency states that the wreck is regarded as a war grave and that the peace of the grave should be respected by leaving the site undisturbed. That statement expresses a clear governmental and ethical position. It does not, by itself, establish the exact legal protections currently applying to the wreck under Philippine law or an international agreement.

For accuracy, HMF should distinguish among:

• Recognition or treatment of a wreck as a maritime war grave

• Ethical commitment to non-disturbance

• Protection under Philippine heritage law

• Protection under another country’s domestic legislation

• Protection created through a bilateral or multilateral agreement

• A formally declared archaeological or protected site

The article also states that human remains are visible at the wreck. This sensitive claim should not be repeated without direct documentation from qualified investigators and careful consideration of the wishes of descendant families and participating governments.

Numerical Claims and the Need for Attribution

The article uses several large estimates to convey the scale of the hellship and forced-labor system. These figures are useful, but they should always be attributed to their originating source.

Frequently cited estimates suggest that approximately 125,000 to 126,000 Allied prisoners were transported on more than 150 voyages involving roughly 130 Japanese ships. More than 21,000 Allied prisoners are estimated to have died during transport or as a result of attacks on these vessels.

Other organizations use different totals because researchers do not always apply the same definition of a hellship voyage. Some counts include vessels transporting romusha, civilian internees, local military personnel, or prisoners moved on voyages that did not end in sinking.

The estimates concerning Indonesian forced labor are still more difficult to establish. The Indo Project reports that millions of Indonesians were subjected to forced labor and that approximately 300,000 may have been transported by sea. These figures should be presented as sourced estimates rather than settled totals.

HMF should preserve differing figures in its research system rather than selecting one number without explanation. Each estimate should record:

• The originating source

• The population included

• The geographical scope

• The period covered

• Whether it counts ships, voyages, or transport events

• Whether the figure is documented, reconstructed, or estimated

Strengths of the Article

The Indo Project article succeeds in several important ways:

• It introduces the hellship system to a general audience in accessible language.

• It recognizes Asian forced laborers as central participants in this history.

• It connects individual ships to the wider Japanese forced-labor system.

• It directs readers toward survivor stories, museums, archives, memorial organizations, and educational resources.

• It demonstrates that hellship research remains active rather than complete.

• It identifies the Hōfuku Maru discovery as part of a continuing international effort to locate, document, and protect maritime war graves.

Its greatest value lies not in presenting new archival evidence but in broadening the way the subject is framed.

Areas Requiring Further Research

The article also highlights several significant research gaps:

1. Romusha passenger records: What Japanese, Dutch, Indonesian, port, labor, railway, mining, or local administrative records survive?

2. Mixed passenger populations: Which transports carried both Allied POWs and Asian forced laborers, and in what numbers?

3. Terminology: How did Japanese authorities classify military prisoners, civilian internees, locally recruited laborers, conscripted workers, and transported forced laborers?

4. Voyage totals: Why do institutional estimates differ in the number of hellships and voyages?

5. Victim identification: Can village records, family histories, cemetery information, or oral testimony restore names to currently anonymous casualty totals?

6. Maritime-war-grave protection: What legal protections apply to hellship wrecks in the territorial waters of the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Japan, Taiwan, and other affected jurisdictions?

7. Ethical documentation: How should researchers handle imagery of human remains, personal possessions, and disturbed wreck sites?

These questions should form part of a broader international hellships research agenda.

HMF Assessment

The Hellships Memorial Foundation considers the Indo Project article a worthwhile and important contribution to public understanding.

It does not introduce a newly discovered roster or archival collection, and several of its numerical and legal statements require careful attribution or qualification. Its broader interpretation, however, is valuable: the hellship story encompasses not only Allied prisoners of war, but also enormous numbers of Asian forced laborers whose identities and experiences remain inadequately documented.

Remembering the named must not result in forgetting the unnamed.

The next stage of hellship research should bring military archives, maritime archaeology, family history, survivor testimony, Indonesian scholarship, and local community memory together. Only through that wider approach can the historical record more fully represent all those transported aboard these vessels.

Sources and Further Reading

• The Indo Project — The Hell Ships
  Original article published September 15, 2026.

• Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands — Japanese cargo ship Hōfuku Maru with Dutch prisoners of war discovered
  Official Dutch announcement concerning the wreck identification and its treatment as a war grave.

• National WWII Museum — Japanese Hell Ships of World War II
  Historical overview covering the Oryoku Maru, Enoura Maru, Brazil Maru, survivor Ben Skardon, and DPAA’s identification work.

• U.S. National Archives — American POWs on Japanese Ships Take a Voyage into Hell
  Archival study of POW records and the Shinyo Maru, Arisan Maru, Oryoku Maru, Enoura Maru, and Brazil Maru.

• Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency — Enoura Maru Identification Project
  Official project information concerning the continuing identification of remains associated with the Oryoku Maru–Enoura Maru–Brazil Maru transport sequence.

Editorial note: Numerical estimates concerning hellship voyages, Allied POW casualties, and transported romusha vary among sources. Figures in this analysis should therefore be understood as attributed estimates rather than final totals.