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Jim Fallace

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Transportation to Japan

During this journey that Fallace and a few of his fellow prisoners were able to escape from the Japanese. Conditions aboard ship were appalling - about four hundred men were sharing the small hold and the situation was about to get much worse.

The Lisbon Maru reached the Chusan Archipelago on the Chinese coast and made ready to move out across the South China Sea to Japan. The vessel was unmarked and was therefore a legitimate target for the Allied forces patrolling the area. They had no means of knowing that these ships were prison ships possibly holding their own comrades.

The United States Submarine Grouper sited the ship and fired six torpedoes, two of which struck the target. The Japanese responded by forcing the wounded lying on the deck into the holds. Nimori, despite the fact that the ship could have been sinking, gave the order to 'batten down the hatches'.

Later, the crew created a gap in the hatch cover to allow a ventilation chute to be passed down but they did not issue any food or water and did not allow any of the prisoners on deck. They had made no sanitary arrangements leaving the men to perform their natural functions where they stood or laid. In the intense late-summer heat the smell became unbearable.

Other Japanese craft reached the vessel and took her in tow. At about 1800 the Lisbon Maru’s crew again removed the ventilation and sealed the hatches, cutting off all light and making the hold almost airtight. At 0100 the first man died. The prisoners managed to get a message to Nimori who promised to open the hatches at 1200 hrs. A second man died. The men became restless and it was necessary for the fitter men to continually call for quiet in order to preserve air.

There was no drinking water in any of the holds. By 0400 the next day Nimori appeared and lowered an empty bucket and a can of tainted milk into the hold. He also lowered a bucket into another hold. It did not contain water but urine.

Number Three Hold was taking in water. To add to the discomfort the captors refused requests from the prisoners to allow the men were suffering from dysentery and diarrhoea to use the deck latrines. Several more men died during the following night and the ship began flooding rapidly. Prisoners made an attempt to escape from one of the holds but the Japanese opened fire on them and then fired shots into the hold.

The ship was settling. It lurched and water flowed across the deck and into one of the holds. The men attempted to break out, Fallace leading the way from his hold. When they reached the deck they discovered that half of the deck was under water. Fallace dived over the side and began swimming towards the coast which was about three miles away.

There were four other Japanese vessels in the area but none attempted to help the prisoners in the water or those still on the prison ship. Very soon, the Lisbon Maru sank completely. The Japanese attempted to rescue their own men but ignored all the prisoners.

Lord Russell of Liverpool later wrote in ‘The Knights of Bushido’- a book documenting the history of Japanese war crimes -

‘There can be no doubt that the Japanese had originally intended to let all 1816 prisoners drown and then say that the torpedoed ship had sunk instantaneously and had given them no time to effect a rescue. In the Nippon Times, an English language newspaper published in Japan, this very version of the sinking of the Lisbon Maru was reported’.

To find out about Fallace’s escape, select Next

 

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