War in the Pacific

In December 1941, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and Malaya, launching the Pacific war. The following month, as part of the same thrust targeting the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies, they launched air raids (from 5 January) and a landing (23 January) against the town of Rabaul, at the northern tip of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, in the former Australian territory of New Guinea. By late that day, Australian forces at Rabaul made up of 2/22 Infantry Battalion and 1st Independent Company, the main components of 'Lark Force'; members of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles; and smaller anti-aircraft and ambulance units, were defeated.

Prisoners on board the Montevideo Maru

Of the 1396 Australian military personnel at Rabaul before the attack, 160 were killed south of the town at Tol, about 400 eventually escaped to Australia, and the remainder became prisoners of war (POWs). After the invasion, most civilians gathered around Rabaul where the Japanese forces set up a camp for civilian and military prisoners.

In June and July 1942 the Japanese naval authorities made two attempts to transfer these prisoners to Japan. The first group, of about 60 Australian officers and 18 women, including Army nurses, arrived safely. The second, historically thought to include 845 POWs and 208 civilian internees, left on 22 June for Hainan on the Montevideo Maru, a freighter requisitioned by the Japanese navy. It was not marked as a POW carrier. On 1 July it was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine USS Sturgeon off the Philippine island of Luzon, resulting in the deaths of all prisoners and internees on board. The loss of life on the Montevideo Maru is described as the worst maritime disaster, in peace or war, in Australian history.


The deaths of the men on the Montevideo Maru were not fully revealed in Australia until after the end of the war when evidence was found in Japan. Small pieces of information had come from wartime sources such as New Guineans who had reached safety and captured Japanese personnel and, after hostilities had ended, Japanese and surviving civilians in Rabaul, and the POW officers who had returned from Japan. In September 1945 the Australian authorities sent Australian Army officer Major Harold S Williams, a pre-war resident of Japan, to Tokyo as a liaison officer with No. 1 Australian Prisoners of War Contact and Enquiry Unit [B3856, 144/14/89] to investigate this and other POW matters.

Montevideo Maru route

Follow the path the vessel took and learn where and how it was sunk.

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Montevideo Maru

The freighter Montevideo Maru

Before the war, it operated as a passenger and cargo vessel, travelling mainly between Asia and South America.