The Junyo Maru was a Japaneses “Hell Ship“. These ships transported POWs and Javanese natives in closely cramped quarters. The conditions on board were truly inhuman with no room to move, packed like sardines. The ship was was fitted with extra decks of bamboo, subdivided into cages to keep the prisoners in. They frequently had to remove the dead by passing the bodies overhead or just live with them next to you. There was a latrine in the rear of the boat but the lines were long and took forever to get there through the human mass that most of it was done where they stood.
Johan was transported on the Junyo Maru with the POW Java Party 23 to work on the Pekanbaru Death Railway. It was escorted by two small gun-boats. Two days out of the Batavia harbor, on September 18th, 1944 at around 5:30pm, the Junyo Maru was struck by several torpedoes from the British submarine HMS Tradewind. The British had no idea there were prisoners onboard and contrary to the Geneva Convention, Japan did not fly a red cross to signify POWs onboard.
Of the 6,500 prisoners,
5,620 lost their lives in the sinking.
723 Survived.
The worst single shipwreck in the Pacific Theater
See more at wrecksite: https://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?105102