When over 2,000 Indian POWS on a Japanese ‘hell ship’ died after being torpedoed by a US submarine

At 3.22 pm on February 24, 1944, the Japanese ships Ryusei and Tango Maru sailed from Surabaya in Java headed for Ambon in the famous Moluccan spice islands of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Between them they had 12,000 men aboard. They included 2,000 Japanese soldiers, over 7,000 Dutch colonial prisoners of war and Romushas (conscripted Indonesian labourers), and 2,865 Indian POWs.

Five days earlier, 2,735 km away, an American submarine called USS Rasher under Lieutenant-Commander William R Laughan had left Fremantle in Australia on its third patrol of the war. They were to meet near Macassar – a strait between the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi – in a fateful encounter, resulting in 8,000 deaths.

This is yet another almost-forgotten episode in the bloody World War II, as the Allied powers led by the United Kingdom, the US and the Soviet Union battled the Axis alliance of Germany and Japan.

Indians became part of the largest voluntary force in history. At least 2.5 million men joined the British Indian Army. But after the British surrendered their colony of Singapore to Japan in February 1942, an estimated 128,000 Allied soldiers were taken prisoner. They included 62,000 Indians.

Having conquered all of South East Asia and large parts...

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