The wreck of a Japanese ship that sank in 1942 after it was torpedoed by an American submarine has been found, the Australian government said on Saturday. The ship was carrying hundreds of prisoners of war, most of them Australian, who all died, and the discovery resolves a painful episode in that country’s wartime history.
A U.S. Navy submarine attacked the ship, the Montevideo Maru, in July 1942 as it traveled unescorted from Rabaul, a port in the Australian territory of New Guinea that had been captured by Japan earlier that year, to China’s Hainan Island, which Japan had invaded in 1939.
The ship had no markings indicating that it was carrying prisoners of war and sank carrying more than 1,000 prisoners from about 16 nations, most of them Australian service members. It is the largest loss of life of Australians at sea.
The wreck was spotted this month on the seafloor northwest of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines, according to Fugro, a company based in the Netherlands that provided the survey ship. The mission took five years to plan, and an autonomous underwater vehicle found the wreck after 12 days of searching, Fugro said.
The shipwreck site lies at a depth of more than 4,000 meters, or about 13,000 feet — a spot deeper than where the Titanic, the world’s most famous shipwreck, came to rest south of Newfoundland.
“This brings to an end one of the most tragic chapters in Australia’s maritime history,” Richard Marles, the country’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, said in a video posted to his Twitter account on Saturday.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia said in a separate statement that the government hoped the news would bring “a measure of comfort to loved ones who have kept a long vigil.”
“The extraordinary effort behind this discovery speaks for the enduring truth of Australia’s solemn national promise to always remember and honor those who served our country,” he said.
The Silentworld Foundation, the nonprofit research outfit that led the search with support from the Australian government, notes on its website that there is no DNA database of the victims. But the group’s director, John Mullen, said in a statement that he hoped the discovery would “bring closure to the many families devastated by this terrible disaster.”
Mr. Mullen told the Australian broadcaster ABC that the site would not be disturbed because it is a war grave.
The Montevideo Maru was a passenger vessel built in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1926, according to the Australian government. Before World War II broke out, an Osaka shipping line sailed it on a route from Japan to South America.
During the war, the Japanese imperial fleet used the ship to move provisions and people, including prisoners, through Southeast Asia. Shortly after 2 a.m. on July 1, 1942, as it traveled to Hainan Island carrying troops and civilians from Australia and other nations, it was torpedoed by the U.S.S. Sturgeon and sank in as little as 11 minutes.
“Everybody was trapped in the holds down below in the middle of the night,” Mr. Mullen of Silentworld Foundation told the ABC. “I can only imagine how horrendous it must have been. It’s beyond comprehension.”
The ship’s Japanese crew was ordered to abandon ship, according to the Australian government, but all of the lifeboats capsized. Only 17 of the 88 guards and crew survived the sinking and a subsequent march through a jungle in the Philippines.
There was no immediate statement from the Japanese government on Saturday, and a phone call to its Foreign Ministry went unanswered. The United States Navy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.
