Eighty years after the sinking of the hell ship, Oyoku Maru, in December 1944, DPAA conducted a bold, multi-year recovery operation in the Philippine Sea. The Japanese hell ship was inadvertently bombed by the US in December 1944, resulting in more than 1,600 prisoners of war falling with the ship, of whom approximately 250 Americans are still unaccounted for. USNS Salvor is the base for naval divers and forensic anthropologists conducting recovery efforts at 90 feet in zero visibility conditions and entangled in crushed metal. This effort is authorized under the Sunken Military Craft Act and represents the United States’ commitment to providing the most thorough possible accounting for troops facing the worst maritime conditions of the Pacific War.
The tragedy of the hell ship Ōryoku Maru
According to US Navy history, in December 1944, the Oryoku Maru, one of Japan’s notorious ‘hell ships’, was carrying more than 1,600 Allied prisoners of war when it was attacked by US Navy aircraft from the USS Hornet. Unaware that their own countrymen were held in dark and suffocating confinement, American pilots conducted 17 separate air strikes over a three-day period. Naval History and Heritage Command records describe chaos and madness in the lower decks as extreme dehydration and suffocation took their toll before the ship came to rest on the bottom of Subic Bay.
pentagon High-precision search for 250 missing Americans
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has dispatched a special team to the Philippine Sea to begin the complex process of excavating the Oryoku Maru. Operating from the USNS Salvor, a rescue and salvage ship, fifteen divers are working at a depth of approximately 90 feet to try to recover the remains that have been trapped for more than 80 years, particularly those of the 250 Americans who were lost. The site represents ‘a complex mass of steel’ covered with extensive layers of river silt, reducing underwater visibility to near zero, requiring high-precision forensic dredging to separate biological evidence from the debris.
Legal protection under the Sunken Military Craft Act
Recovery is strictly regulated by the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004 (SMCA), which grants the United States ‘protected sovereign status’ over the remains of its sunken military craft and its service personnel, regardless of whether they are in territorial waters. This federal law ensures that Oryoku Maru is a protected site and any unauthorized salvage or looting is prevented. The Mission has a formal diplomatic partnership with the Philippine Government to carry out the policy of ‘fullest possible accounting’ with respect to missing personnel.