PNGAA Library

Full text of the speech that Mr Ian Hodges, Military History Section, AWM, gave at the Memorial Service

I am honoured to have been invited to speak here today at the unveiling of a memorial that commemorates a tragic, but all too little-known, episode in Australia’s history; the loss of more than one thousand lives in the sinking of the Montevideo Maru on 1 July 1942.

The opening months of 1942 were a disastrous time for the Allies in Asia and the Pacific. Within a matter of weeks Japanese forces had overrun great swathes of territory. Singapore fell with the loss of the 8th Division in February and by the end of the month Japanese forces had occupied Java and Timor, just a few hundred kilometres from Darwin.

New Britain fell early in January 1942. Lark Force, as the Australian defenders of the island were known, were hopelessly outnumbered, poorly equipped and had no plan of withdrawal. The Chiefs of Staff recognised that they had no chance of repelling an invasion, but felt, nonetheless, that the Japanese should be made to fight for the island. The defenders put up a brave fight, but the outcome was never in doubt. Of some 1,500, 30 were killed in the fighting and about 400 escaped the island. Another 160 were killed in the Tol plantation - one of a series of massacres of prisoners committed by the Japanese in the opening months of the war.

The survivors became prisoners of war. Several hundred foreign civilians who had been living and working on the island were also interned. Little was heard of, or from, either group again. There was one occasion, however, in April 1942 when prisoners were given a chance to write to their families. The letters were dropped in mailbags over Port Moresby and about 400 were delivered. For many who received these letters it was their last contact.

On 22 June 1942 just over a thousand men, military prisoners and civilians, were marched from their camps to Rabaul’s harbour. On other days they had walked the same route to work on the docks, but this time they carried whatever kit they possessed and were flanked by guards with machine guns. Chinese and New Guinean dockside labourers saw them board a ship, the 10,000-ton Montevideo Maru. They were among the last to see her human cargo alive.

Lieutenant Commander Wright, captain of the American submarine USS Sturgeon, wrote in his log that early on the morning of 1 July 1942 his submarine chased a large ship as it sped from the Philippines westwards into the South China Sea. He guessed that it was heading for Ilainan and for some time doubted whether he could catch it. But by 2:30 in the morning the submarine had drawn close enough to fire its torpedoes. Four were fired from 4000 yards, two hit and the ship sank within ten minutes.

Only three lifeboats were lowered, all capsized and one was badly damaged. Even just after the sinking there were few survivors in the water and the Japanese crewmen and naval guards who had made it onto the lifeboats headed for the Philippines coast. According to Japanese accounts the captain and more than ten of his crew reached land where most of them, including the captain, were killed by Filippino guerrillas. Five survivors set out on foot for Manila, two died en-route, the rest took ten days to reach the city. They reported the sinking and a search was immediately ordered, but too much time had elapsed and no trace of either the ship or survivors was found.

For the families of the men who had been on the Montevideo Maru there was never any news during the war, but Japanese authorities had known of the loss since shortly after the sinking. The ship’s owners were informed three weeks after it happened and in January the following year the Japanese Navy Department forwarded details of the sinking to the Prisoner of War Information Bureau together with a nominal roll of the prisoners and civilians on board. During the war the International Committee of the Red Cross made several enquiries concerning the men who had been captured on Rabaul but received no answer. In 1944 the Japanese Foreign Office sought information on the missing civilians from Rabaul, but no response was forthcoming and the Swiss legation made at least seven unsuccessful attempts to get the same information. Like many who waited in Australia for news of the men who had been lost as the Japanese advanced through Southeast Asia and the western Pacific in 1942, the families and friends of the soldiers and civilians who had remained on New Britain, had spent three and a half years wondering and hoping. By the end of September 1945 lists of men recovered from Japanese prison camps were being published every day, but still more than 5,000 Australians remained unaccounted for including those from Rabaul.

Stories suggesting the loss of a Japanese prison ship carrying many of the missing men from Rahaul first appeared in Australian newspapers on 26 and 27 September 1945, and on the 28th an Australian officer fluent in Japanese, a Major H S Williams of the 1st Australian POW Enquiry Unit, was searching through records in Tokyo’s Prisoner of War Information Bureau when he found a list of 1,056 names. Many were of servicemen identified by name and serial number, the rest were civilians. Their place of capture was given as Rabaul and many appeared to be Australians - but the names having been translated from English into Japanese script and then back again created considerable difficulties. The Director of the Prisoner of War Information Bureau admitted that full details of what had happened to the men from Rabaul had been in Japanese possession since the beginning of 1943 and he expressed regret that no details had been transmitted to Australia. The translated roll reached Canberra in late October 1945 - telegrams were sent to families across the country confirming what they had feared; few of the men taken prisoner or interned on Rabaul in 1942 had survived the year.

As we stand here today to commemorate the loss of the Montevideo Maru, we honour those men who died and their families who spent long years waiting for news of their loved ones. Far too few Australians know that on a tropical July night in 1942 this country suffered its most terrible maritime disaster. More Australians lost their lives in a few minutes than in ten years of the Vietnam War - they, and the families and friends who endured years of not knowing their fate, deserve to be remembered.