A Japanese merchant ship that sank during World War II while carrying over 1,000 prisoners of war in Australia’s largest loss of life at sea has been found.
The Montevideo Maru was discovered off the northwest coast of the Philippines’ Luzon island at a depth of more than 4,000 meters (13,000ft) in the South China Sea, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles confirmed in a video he posted on Saturday from his Twitter account.
The discovery brought to an end to “one of the most tragic chapters in Australia’s maritime history,” he said.
The vessel was transporting approximately 1,060 prisoners from around 16 countries, including 850 Australian service members, from the former Australian territory of New Guinea to what was then the Japanese-occupied island of Hainan when an American submarine torpedoed and sank the ship – which had not been marked as transporting prisoners of war – on July 1, 1942.
