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There are events which shape us as individuals which we can recall and there are those which we didn’t personally experience but nonetheless have a profound impact on us.
With this in mind I wanted to highlight the amazing work of Fang Li, a Chinese film director, who released a documentary film yesterday in China that will shortly be available elsewhere in the world called “The Sinking of The Lisbon Maru”. This film release is the culmination of 8 years work focused on revealing the story behind the sinking of the Japanese war ship “The Lisbon Maru”. The trailer for this film is attached to this post.
The reason that this film is significant to my family and myself is that my grandfather Christos Pavlou was a British Royal Scots soldier on board The Lisbon Maru when this incident occurred.
The Sinking of The Lisbon Maru film unveils the long-buried truth of the 1942 sinking of the "Lisbon Maru," an armed Japanese cargo ship that participated in World War II. In October 1942, this vessel transported more than 1,800 British prisoners of war (POWs) from Hong Kong towards Japan, without bearing a sign indicating it was carrying POWs. This was in violation of the Geneva Convention.
After being struck by a torpedo from a nearby US submarine, Japanese soldiers, instead of trying to save the POWs, battened them down below deck, left them to drown, and even shot at them, leading to the deaths of 828 prisoners.
This story has been left untold for 80 years.
For context, those who perished on The Lisbon Maru amounted to over half of those who died on The Titanic when that ship sank.
When the ship went down off the coast of East China's Zhejiang Province, 384 POWs were fortunately rescued by local Chinese fishermen, who pulled them from the water at risk of their own life before they were eventually recaptured by the Japanese after a day of freedom on nearby Chinese islands.
To create this film Fang's team searched for the wreckage of the ship and held interviews with families of the soldiers on board in order to uncover the full details of this tragedy. The numerous face to face interviews, together with the historical scene animations in the documentary, help shed a light on a forgotten chapter in history.
“We not only finished a film but also guarded a history," said Fang. "This cruel historical event has been buried under the sea and denied by the Japanese military for 82 years, and I hope that together we can share it with the world."
This post is to highlight the fantastic work of Fang Li in bringing this tragic WW2 incident to life so that it isn’t forgotten.
It is also to honour my grandad Christos (who I am named after). If he hadn’t made it off the ship (with the assistance of the Chinese fishermen) and then hung in there as a POW in Japan for 3 years then I wouldn’t be around today to share this story with you all. #lisbonmaru
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