Sunken wreck of WWII Japanese ship on which nearly 1,000 Australians died found

Apr 22 (Japan Today) - Deep-sea explorers said Saturday they had located the wreck of a World War II Japanese transport ship, the Montevideo Maru, which was torpedoed off the Philippines killing nearly 1,000 Australians aboard.

The ship -- sunk on July 1, 1942, by a U.S. submarine whose crew did not realize it carried prisoners of war -- was found at a depth of more than four kilometers, said the maritime archaeology group Silentworld Foundation, which organized the mission.

The sinking of the Montevideo Maru was Australia's worst-ever maritime disaster, killing an estimated 979 Australian citizens including at least 850 troops.

Civilians from 13 other countries were also aboard, the foundation said, bringing the total number of prisoners killed to about 1,060.

They had been captured a few months earlier by Japanese forces in the fall of the coastal township of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. ...continue reading

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