Heroic Chinese Fishermen Rescue British Prisoners of War
from Sinking Ship under Fire from Japanese
In 1942 the Japanese cargo ship Lisbon Maru was being used to transport British prisoners of war from Hong Kong to Japan to act as slave labour. As the ship was passing a group of islands off the coast of China -- Dongji in the Zhoushan Island Group -- it was torpedoed by an American submarine.
The prisoners were kept in three holds and when the torpedoes struck, the Japanese soldiers on board battened down the hatches to keep the prisoners contained, no doubt hoping they would all drown when the ship sank.
A breakout was organised, but as the prisoners got out of the holds they were fired on by the Japanese troops. They jumped into the sea and the Japanese continued to shoot at them. Some were shot and some drowned.
The local fishermen from Dongji watched with horror as this tragedy unfolded and immediately took to their flimsy craft, determined to do what they could to rescue the prisoners. Taking to the sea in this way in the face of Japanese rifle fire showed exceptional courage, because China and Japan were at war at the time, and they knew the Japanese would show them no mercy.
Altogether these courageous fishermen saved the lives of 384 prisoners and took them back to the islands. The locals were very poor with barely enough to feed and clothe themselves, and certainly nothing to spare. But they all pitched in and scraped together what they could find to feed and clothe the prisoners, all of whom were poorly clothed and many were completely naked. Some of the prisoners spent the night in the local temple, others in the villagers' houses. The next day the Japanese troops came to the islands to round up the survivors. Unwilling to impose further on the goodwill of their hosts, the prisoners quickly gave themselves up and were retaken prisoner and continued their unwelcome journey to Japan and slavery.
However, the local islanders successfully hid three of the prisoners until the Japanese had left, and eventually these men managed to get to the mainland and make their way to Chongqing in central China where they used the local radio station to broadcast to the world an account of the incident and the appalling behaviour of their captors.
Altogether 828 of the 1,834 prisoners on board perished in the incident, and but for the heroism of the Chinese fishermen this figure would have been much higher.
Further details can be found on The Tragedy page.
