THE LISBON MARU MASSACRE: A DRAMATIS PERSONAE

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The war in the Far East was marked by countless examples of courage and self-sacrifice. But it also generated a litany of horrors and massacres, not least amongst them the invasion of Hong Kong by the Imperial Japanese Army which was accompanied by rape, the widescale murder of Chinese civilians, and the massacre of Allied Prisoners of War. But amongst these atrocities, the sinking of the transport ship Lisbon Maru and the deliberate killing of hundreds of unarmed prisoners of war (POWs) stands out even to this day as a shameful act of barbarity.

This book, though, is not about the invasion of Hong Kong and its bloody aftermath. Nor is it so much about the sinking of the Lisbon Maru - those stories have been told elsewhere. Rather, it’s the authors’ attempt to bring some degree of insight and remembrance into the individual lives of the 1,816 men who sailed on that ill-fated vessel.