Two Hellships, Thousands Remembered
82 years ago this Sunday, on October 11, 1944, about 1,781 American POWs were loaded into the holds of the Arisan Maru in Manila. The ship hid off Palawan for days during air raids, went back to Manila, and joined a convoy north on October 21.
On October 24 she was torpedoed in the South China Sea. Only nine men survived, so the Arisan Maru remains the deadliest single loss of American POWs at sea.
Just five weeks earlier, on September 7, the Shinyo Maru had been sunk off Sindangan, Mindanao. Two ships, two Septembers and Octobers, thousands of families still waiting for answers. That's why the search for the Shinyo Maru matters to us.
If you'd like, take a moment this Sunday to remember them. Do you have a relative who was on the Arisan Maru?
