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Death on the Hellships: Prisoner at Sea in the Pacific
War
By Gregory Michno
Published by Leo Cooper, Pen & Sword Books Ltd.
Price £25.00, 2001, 366 pages.
Gregory Michno was born in Detroit in 1948. His father was a submariner
in World War II aboard the USS Pampanito, one of the many submarines,
which hunted in packs in the seas around south east Asia, and which sunk
many Japanese ships carrying POWs.
This well researched and documented book is crammed with personal accounts
of the many movements of POWs to meet the Japanese demand for slave labour
as they advanced through south east Asia, the conflicting calls from Japan
to replace men enlisted into the ever increasing armed forces. It is not
a book for the squeamish for many of the accounts of the conditions in
which men were transported, and their efforts to survive, are truly harrowing.
Underlying this story of unrelenting horror, which some have said is too
terrible for a book, is the recent revelation that the Allies had, in
the spring of 1943, cracked the code used by the Japanese when signalling
ship movements. Thereafter everything the Allies needed to know about
ships' times, routes and cargoes was passed to the submarines hunting
them. Not surprisingly increased dramatically through 1943 and 1944 and
though hard pressed shipyards added 465,000 tons to the fleet, losses
of 1,809,000 tons reduced the total tonnage at sea to 1,466,000, 23% of
what the Japanese had started the war with. In the process America lost
more POWs by 'friendly fire' than in the battle for Okinawa the bloodiest
of all Pacific battles.
This book is a reminder of the number of other nationalities, including
civilians, who suffered at the hands of the Japanese. The detail and human
stories it provides complement the essential facts of Van Waterford's
book Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II. In the latter for example
the last draft from Hong Kong to Japan is recorded as a single journey
of just 6 days. It was however a 17 days three leg marathon as one clapped
out hulk was exchanged another at Formosa and patched up in Shanghai.
For any research into the war in the Pacific this is a valuable companion
to Van Waterford. It has an equally extensive list of references and bibliography.
It can be ordered through local libraries. There is a copy in the Luton
Library.
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