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Hellships and Slave Labor S EA TRANSPORT DETAILS are perhaps the least-known aspect of the Pacific POW experience, even though more than 126,000 POWs were transported and more than 21,000 died en route. By the prisoners , and in the literature on the subject, these transports are most often referred to by a singular name: hellships.1 From the war’s beginning, the Japanese had moved prisoners from point of capture or collection camps to where labor was required—to Burma and Thailand, Manchuria, Formosa, and various points in between . Early journeys were often short, inter-island trips. By 1944, however , most lasted weeks, as the Japanese sent increasing numbers of POWs to Japan to fill the labor void in their domestic economy. A level of danger from Allied submarines had always existed, but this risk multiplied as the war went on and the Allies gained control of the seas. By early 1944, U.S. and British submarines regularly patrolled the western Pacific and South China Sea, main shipping lanes used by the Japanese. From mid-1944, carrier-based aircraft increased the risk of attack .2 The risk to the prisoner transports was great, as the Japanese did not identify these ships as carrying POWs. Recognizing this danger, the International Red Cross had worked for an accord governing the safety of any and all POWs being transported, but in neither Europe nor the Pacific did the belligerent powers ever come to an agreement. As a result, in the Pacific, Japanese ships continued to sail and submarines and aircraft continued to sink them. Indeed, more than 19,000 of the POWs who perished on hellships were killed by this so-called friendly fire. The web becomes more tangled: by 1944, U.S. intelligence often knew the names of Japanese ships carrying prisoners; picking these ships out of a convoy would have been nearly impossible, however, and so orders were issued to submarine commanders to attack the convoys. And so men died.3 176 H H H H H H 7H H H H H H Many Pacific POWs describe the hellship transport as the absolute worst period of their incarceration. The time spent on these ships indeed resembled time in hell. Temperatures in the holds regularly rose above one hundred degrees. Packed in so tightly they often were unable to sit, prisoners received almost no food and, maddeningly, far too little water. A lack of sanitary facilities meant men literally lived in sewage. Submarines attacked convoys, and the sounds of nearby ships exploding at times led to near panic as men feared their ship was next. Time aboard a hellship was the ultimate test of a man’s will to maintain sanity; survival , as one prisoner described it, demanded that he simply shut down his senses and crawl inside himself.4 Surviving a hellship journey and disembarking in Japan initiated yet another chapter in men’s lives as POWs. On the docks, contingents of prisoners were split into groups, varying in size from a few dozen to a few hundred, and transported to locations where labor was required—in this respect, a system similar to the Japanese practice since 1942. But unlike the Pacific islands and South Asia, where in almost all cases the military administered the camps, in Japan most camps operated in union with private industry. Japanese companies—including well-known concerns such as Hitachi Shipbuilding, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Mitsubishi Industries—contracted for and made extensive use of POW labor. Camps usually were attached to an industrial concern, such as a steelworks or a mining operation; additional prisoners worked as stevedores or on various construction projects.5 Conditions in Japan steadily deteriorated in the war’s final year. The work often was grueling and, as with mining, very dangerous. Camp guards on the whole proved no better than those at other locations. Unheated , poorly insulated barracks combined with inadequate clothing to accentuate the cold. By early 1945, food rations were being reduced to absolute minimum levels: imports essentially stopped as submarines continued to take their toll; domestically, a severe labor shortage and destroyed transport network further reduced what food was available. Japanese civilians suffered; POWs even more so. Friendship and trust were tested as never before—with some unfortunate yet predictable results. Finally, prisoners across Japan repeatedly were told that if, or when, an Allied invasion took place, they all would be executed. Men were hellships and slave labor 177 [18.119.107.96] Project MUSE...

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