Latest news with #LisbonMaru
The Star
21-05-2025
- General
- The Star
Descendants of Lisbon Maru survivors, Chinese fishermen honor heroic WWII rescue
HANGZHOU, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Eighteen descendants of rescued British prisoners of war (POWs) during the Lisbon Maru incident joined descendants of Chinese fishermen at a commemorative ceremony Tuesday on an east China island, where local fishermen saved 384 British soldiers from drowning under Japanese gunfire in 1942. The gathering, the first to include foreign representatives since a memorial was erected last year, was held on Qingbang island, a small islet off China's Zhoushan Islands in the eastern Zhejiang Province, where a 1-tonne monument made of naval bronze commemorates the heroic rescue 83 years ago. "This memorial stands as a bridge -- between past and present, between China and the UK, between sorrow and solidarity," said Anthony Jones, grandson of survivor Thomas Theodore Jones and chairman of the Lisbon Maru Memorial Association. "We honor all, both the dead and the living, who kept their memory alive." In October 1942, the Lisbon Maru, a cargo vessel requisitioned by the Japanese army to transport more than 1,800 British POWs from Hong Kong to Japan, was torpedoed off the Zhoushan Islands by a U.S. submarine after failing to display mandated POW transport markings. As the vessel sank, fishermen of Dongji braved machine-gun fire to pluck drowning British POWs from the sea and managed to rescue 384 of them. "Our forefathers used to say 'to ignore those in peril would disgrace the sea' and their actions exemplified selflessness and boundless compassion," noted Wu Buwei, whose grandfather, Wu Qisheng, participated in the heroic rescue. "As their descendants, we take immense pride in their legacy." The 4.5-meter-long memorial, bearing the inscription "Love knows no boundary; Friendship transcends time" in both Chinese and English alongside a detailed account of the event, depicts interlocked arms emerging from turbulent waves -- a design inspired by rescuers' accounts of them hauling POWs from the water by their wrists. Qu Xiaoshi of the China Academy of Art, the memorial's designer, revealed that the design underwent over 40 revisions before a village elder's recollection of "life-or-death grips" crystallized the concept. "Though the Lisbon Maru sank, the bond it forged never will," Wu said before the flower-laden memorial, where photographs stood in silent rows. "As a descendant of the Dongji fishermen, we'll guard this truth like our ancestors guarded lives -- embracing peace and friendship as the ocean embraces all boats."
BBC News
21-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Remembering the WWII sinking of the Lisbon Maru
A memorial has been unveiled to the sinking of a wartime Japanese cargo ship and the loss of more than 800 British prisoners of Lisbon Maru was torpedoed by a US submarine in October 1942, which did not know it was taking the PoWs from Hong Kong to Japan, to be used as forced labour. Before fleeing the sinking vessel, guards secured the hatches on the allied prisoners. "The intent was that the PoW's would go down with the ship," said Ken Salmon, from Hook, whose father was saved by Chinese memorial, on Qingbang Island, South East of Shanghai, was created after the descendant of another prisoner wrote directly to Chinese President, Xi Jinping. Mr Salmon's father, Andrew, was one of the lucky ones. He was in the ship's hold number three and was with other members of the Royal Artillery. A group managed to use a ladder and force the hatches before it broke, trapping many of the others below decks."Once he got out in the fresh air, he was lucky he wasn't shot," said Mr Salmon."The Japanese saw the prisoners were breaking out of the holds," he explained. "They opened fire using machine guns and rifles." His father, Andrew, wrote an account of what happened in a diary he managed to keep throughout his captivity, even though its discovery would probably have led to his execution. After the war his wife typed up his notes telling how he had dived overboard and was one of around 380 prisoners who were rescued by local fishermen. The Royal Artilleryman and the other survivors were recaptured by the Japanese and put on another ship to continue their journey, eventually being liberated at the end of the war in August his father's account, Ken said he regarded him as "a bit of a hero."He never actually had any hatred for the Japanese, which some people find strange."Andrew Salmon even travelled to Osaka in the 1960s in an attempt to try and locate the camp where had been held. Military historian, Brian Finch, who was associate producer on a documentary telling the story of the sinking said too few people knew about the Lisbon Maru."I think it's the inevitable consequence of people in 1945, who celebrated in May what they thought was the end of the war. "It was just the end of the war in Europe and they'd forgotten about people in the Far East.'Ken Salmon has been unable to discover anything about who it was who saved his father's life, other than them being a fisherman. But having been able to travel there and thank the local community meant a lot to him."A lot of the PoW's were taken by the current and washed out to sea. He was lucky in so many ways." You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
The Guardian
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru review – British wartime tragedy told with potent empathy
This enthralling and shattering Chinese documentary benefits from superb material: a dark Boy's Own yarn from October 1942 about the torpedoing of the wartime freighter Lisbon Maru, the attempted mass murder of the 1,816 British PoWs on board by their Japanese captors, and their rescue by Chinese fishermen from the Zhoushan archipelago. Directors Fang Li, Ming Fan and Lily Gong do an exemplary job of recounting this tragedy from the British, Chinese and (to some extent) Japanese perspectives with a piercing empathy. An oceanic sense of loss pervades the film. Fang, a former geophysicist and the on-camera presenter here, first surveyed the Lisbon Maru's wreck 100 miles south-east of Shanghai in 2016. Now he plumbs the depths of time to reconstruct its story, salvaging the testimony of the PoWs' families, and finally locating the two remaining survivors, nonagenarians Dennis Morley and William Beningfield (who have since died). Morley says his daughter and granddaughter knew nothing about his ordeal; a silence practised by countless others, including the Japanese civilian captain later convicted for his role. His astonished children get the news here from Fang. Morley and Beningfield's words, a trove of historical accounts and artful animation flesh out the horror. The British soldiers were transported in the Lisbon Maru's cargo holds in unspeakable conditions, then after the attack by a US submarine, the hatches were battened as the vessel started to sink. Perhaps to give them the illusion they would be saved, the prisoners were told to pump out the bilge; they worked in four-man, five-minute shifts in darkness for hours. One squaddie, believing he was in hell, went insane. The stiff upper lip factor seems to have benefited the escapees only in the short term; decades later, family members attest to a grim history of PTSD symptoms. Fang's even-handed humanism allows him to excavate this emotional wreckage on all sides, even though the Japanese one remains clouded. While he locates the family of the American torpedoman who pulled the trigger, there is no voice from the Japanese military here. The country has of course long since moved beyond the imperial arrogance that finally saw its troops turn their guns on the desperate Brits, but it's a chilling reminder for our backsliding times of the importance of international law. The film's only real flaw is an occasional sentimentality; it could have done without the syrupy torch song over the roll call of the fallen. Otherwise it's potent stuff; a blockbuster treatment, called Dongji Island, is due in the summer, but it's hard to see it being more affecting than this. The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru is in UK cinemas from 20 March.
