A Japanese ship was in a convoy steaming by means of the South China Sea on September 21, 1944, with round 1,200 British and Dutch prisoners of struggle crammed in its holds. US warplanes, mistaking the unmarked ship for a navy cargo vessel, dropped 4 torpedoes.
One struck the ship. The vessel cut up in two and sank inside minutes, dooming most of the Allied prisoners trapped under deck. Only about 200 of the weakened, sick POWs survived, and the precise location of the wreck was misplaced to the deep.
Now, some 80 years later, researchers have uncovered the servicemen’s closing resting place. The group scoured paperwork buried in Japanese and US navy archives earlier than conducting sonar surveys and technical dives. These efforts in the end positioned the wreck of the Hōfuku Maru close to Zambales province, off the western coast of Luzon, the most important island within the Philippines.
The Japanese navy used 56 unmarked vessels dubbed “hell ships” to move greater than 62,000 POWs during World War II. Allied hearth sank 19 of these vessels. The location of 5 of these wrecks stays unknown.
“We’re talking about a dark hold that’s metal. It stinks, it’s boiling hot. There’s no sanitary conditions. They’re not being fed properly, if at all. Hardly any water,” stated Tim Beckensall, a World War II historian and the search director for the Hellships Memorial Foundation. “It’s about the worst set of conditions you could design.”
The Hellships Memorial Foundation, with assist from the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and the Discovery Channel, discovered the wreck of the Hōfuku Maru. The quest is documented in a two-part season premiere of “Expedition Unknown” that can air June 24 on Discovery Channel. (Discovery Channel and NCS are each half of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
“The most surprising part of this investigation is actually the story itself — the tragic legacy of the Hellships is a chapter of World War II that many people have never heard of,” stated explorer Josh Gates, who presents the present.
“But it’s vital history; the men who died aboard these ships made the ultimate sacrifice and have been waiting 80 years to be found,” he stated by way of e mail.
Official information detailing Hōfuku Maru’s sinking had been incomplete and inconsistent, Beckensall stated. Japanese information had been fragmented, and Allied strike studies offered solely approximate areas.
However, in June 2025, Beckensall’s colleague John Duresky found a digitized Japanese doc written by officers on board the convoy’s lead ship. The doc included a timeline and map depicting the place the convoy was struck; it said that the Hōfuku Maru was second in line when it was hit and cut up in two, in line with Beckensall.
The researchers had been then in a position to cross-reference some of the main points with an “aircraft action report” from the USS Bunker Hill plane provider, which documented the sinking of an AK vessel, an abbreviation for auxiliary cargo, that was the second ship in its convoy. The web site was greater than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the place the ship was assumed to have been misplaced. Beckensall additionally spoke to native fishermen who stated that they had lengthy identified of what gave the impression to be a big wreck on the location.
“It was the Japanese document that started the whole thing, and it was the smoking gun that really led to all the others,” Beckensall stated.
Beckensall, primarily based in Manila on the time, shared the archival findings with the British Embassy, which organized a gathering with the Dutch and Philippine navy attachés, the place Beckensall and Hellships Memorial Foundation founder Randy Anderson offered the proof discovered thus far.
The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands then agreed to fund an preliminary sonar survey and a preliminary dive mission to the positioning, which came about this previous December and January.
To the researchers’ reduction, the divers found some form of wreckage at a depth of round 164 toes (50 meters) proper the place that they had hoped. However, volcanic ash that washed into rivers and the ocean through the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo is slowly engulfing the wreck. Because of the extraordinarily poor situations, figuring out any distinguishing options has been almost unimaginable.
The Discovery Channel acquired concerned in early 2026 and recruited Calvin Mires, a maritime archaeologist for Marine Imaging Technologies, who has labored on many World War II wrecks. Mires, together with underwater imaging specialist Evan Kovacs, took lots of of pictures of the wreck.
The duo used specialised laptop software program to show them right into a 3D mannequin by way of a method generally known as photogrammetry.
“It’s really low visibility, and the camera cleans a lot of that up,” Mires stated. “The camera sees a lot more.”
Mires stated he initially had a “healthy skepticism” however stated the “preponderance of evidence” pointed towards the wreck being the Hōfuku Maru.
The group in contrast the vessel’s dimension, together with the place of its masts and cargo holds, towards blueprints of the Hōfuku Maru, in-built 1919. The wreck is cut up into two items, matching each US and Japanese accounts of its destiny.
The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands has reviewed a report Mires, Beckensall and his colleagues wrote about their investigation and issued a statement June 8 that stated the wreck was “almost certainly” the Hōfuku Maru.
While a majority of the POWs on board the Hōfuku Maru perished, some survived. At least two British servicemen, the late Capt. Nigel Evans and the late Capt. James Gibson, shared harrowing testimony about their therapy on board the ship during war crimes trials held in Singapore by the British shortly after the tip of the battle. Sgt. Maj. Jotani Kitaichi of the Imperial Japanese Army was sentenced to dying by hanging in consequence.
Most of the captured Allied troops on board the ship had began their journey in Singapore and had been destined for Japan, the place prisoners toiled in factories and mines to maintain the struggle effort. The roughly 1,000 British and 250 Dutch POWs crowded into two holds so cramped they needed to take turns mendacity down, according to a court document.
Each man survived on three-quarters of a pint of water every day in sweltering temperatures, the doc famous. While there have been crude bogs on deck, many POWs had been too weak to clamber out to make use of them and as an alternative had to make use of “mess tins as bed pans,” Gibson stated. The prisoners had been at one level given life jackets, however they had been later confiscated after guards discovered them getting used as pillows, the court docket doc stated.
Evans stated issues took a flip for the more severe in Manila the place nearly 100 British prisoners died whereas the ship docked for greater than a month after encountering engine issues. The POWs weren’t allowed on deck.
“Conditions on board became terrible,” he stated. “It was a common sight to see prisoners of war eating their meals within six feet of a corpse being prepared for burial. On the day before we sailed over a third of officers and men were unable to walk unassisted and there were a number of mental cases,” stated Evans, who managed to board one other Japanese ship after the Hōfuku Maru sank and was taken to a POW camp in Taiwan.
Gibson jumped overboard and swam to shore, the place he spent 5 months with Filipino guerillas. “I made complaints during the voyage concerning medical supplies, conditions and food but nothing was done and all I received for my pains was blows from JOTANI,” he stated in an affidavit.
Encountering human stays
During their dives to the wreck, Mires and Gates stated they encountered human stays on the decks however didn’t go into the holds. “This ship is a grave, and now that she’s been identified, the governments of the UK, the Netherlands, and the United States have been notified, and they’ll determine the next course of action,” Gates stated.
The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands stated the wreck was thought-about a struggle grave and wouldn’t be excavated out of reverence for the victims and their households.
No stays of American POWs are believed to be on board the Hōfuku Maru. However, the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency or DPAA, tasked with bringing dwelling fallen service members, began efforts in February to account for the Americans related to one other prisoner of struggle transport ship, the Oryoku Maru.
The vessel sank in Subic Bay on the west coast of Luzon within the Philippines in December 1944, a couple of months after the Hōfuku Maru. Meghan Mumford, the DPAA’s scientific restoration knowledgeable for the Oryoku Maru and an underwater archaeologist, described the restoration as “one of the largest, if not the largest, and certainly one of the most complex missions that we’ve executed.”
Earlier this 12 months, Mumford and a group of specialist divers started eradicating sediment from one of the cargo holds on the wreck the place they believed POWs had been held. Efforts to establish human stays are underway.
The actual coordinates of the Hōfuku Maru, which lies off the coast of San Narciso, aren’t being publicly launched to guard the positioning.
The Hellships Memorial in Subic Bay honors the reminiscence of the servicemen who died aboard the Hōfuku Maru, and the Netherlands stated it will work with different nations to hunt an appropriate technique to commemorate the victims.
“I have in my career recovered remains and it hits you really hard,” stated Mires, who has labored with the DPAA on restoration missions. “The POW ships are really a forgotten part of the battles and the war, and they’re dramatic and horrific and monumental on all levels.”
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