[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 20 (Tuesday, January 30, 2018)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             REMEMBERING THE VOYAGE OF THE ``ORYOKU MARU''

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. MIKE BOST

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, January 30, 2018

  Mr. BOST. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to pause to remember the 
American POWs who arrived in Japan 73 years ago today. These heroes 
were survivors of the infamous ``death cruise'' of the Oryoku Maru. 
These men were prisoners since the American territory fell to the 
Japanese in the spring of 1942. Of the over 1,600 soldiers, sailors, 
airmen, Marines, and civilians who left Manila on December 13, 1944, 
barely 400 arrived at the port of Moji, Japan on January 30, 1945.
  ``Hell Ship'' is simply the only way to describe the vessels and 
conditions the POWs endured. These men were packed in dark holds of 
freighters, usually with coal or animal waste. They were given little 
water, food, or fresh air. Sanitation was non-existent. Men driven 
insane were quickly and brutally quieted. I became familiar with this 
story by assisting my constituent, Ms. Jan Thompson, who is the 
daughter of a survivor of the Oryoku Maru journey and is the President 
of American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society. Her 
father, Robert E. Thompson, was a Navy Pharmacist's Mate who had been 
assigned to a submarine tender in Manila Bay, the USS Canopus. He was 
surrendered on Corregidor. It has been my honor to help preserve the 
memory of the American POWs of Japan and of their experience aboard the 
Hell Ships to Japan. The 400-plus men who died during the stop at Takao 
Harbor, Formosa are currently buried in 20 graves marked simply as 
``Unknowns'' at Hawaii's National Cemetery of the Pacific. Soon there 
will be a memorial plaque on the Memorial Walk at this Cemetery to 
these men who died aboard the Enoura Maru in Formosa on January 9, 
1945, which was one of the Hell Ships that took part in the Oryoku Maru 
journey.

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