July 5, 2015
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2015 July 1 - 7 [SOCIAL ISSUES]
Historical facts testify civilian ships in ‘rear area support’ targeted for attack during Pacific War |
Japan invaded the Southeast and Pacific Island regions in the Asia-Pacific War (1941-1945). During the war, a large number of civilian vessels and crewmembers were mobilized to transport weapons, munitions, fuel, and troops, and many of the ships were sunk in attacks. The War Memorial Maritime Museum, operated by the All Japan Seamen’s Union, is collecting and displaying the materials and records of these incidents.
According to the museum, 7,240 civilian ships were attacked and sunk, claiming the lives of 231,000 people, including 60,000 non-military seamen and 59,000 civilians on board. Though built for commercial use and poorly armed, those ships were sent to the front without a sufficient escort of military ships and ended up being easy targets for enemy torpedoes and airstrikes. Most of the crewmembers aboard are still lying at the bottom of the sea with their ships.
As the death toll rose and staff shortage became severer, the government drastically shortened the training period of seamen. In 1944, many young teenagers sailed to naval battlefields after finishing only two months of training. One in three of the killed civilian sailors were younger than 20 and they included nearly 1,000 fourteen-year-olds.
Okamura Sekiichi who works at the museum said, “Seventy years have passed since the war’s end. Many children visit our museum on school trips, but their teachers have no real-life experience of war. We want to pass down the significance of these historical materials to the next generations.”
Past related articles:
> Wartime Tsushima-Maru tragedy victims seek state compensation in court [April 2, 2013]
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