In Memory of Albert Thorpe & Billy Stringfellow
Their memorial is at
Albert had been captured and was in a camp at Ambon. He was in Liang camp and had been one of the marchers who had been marched across the entire island. The Japs started to move the prisoners out and onto the 'hell ships'. Albert was put aboard the 'Suez Maru'. He was ill and starving and being taken to be part of a slave force to Surbaya. At 8am on November 29th 1943 the U.S. submarine Bonefish fired 4 torpedoes at the 'Suez Maru'. The boat was hit and started to sink. By 9-40 am the boat had sunk. 250 P.O.Ws were in the water clinging to rafts and bits of wood. At 14-00 hrs the minesweeper W12 came back to pick up Japanese and Korean survivors. The captain was a man called Kawano and he gave the order to shoot all allied survivors. Some POWs actually stood up on the rafts so that the Japs could shoot them as they knew what their fate would be. The minesweeper W12 had a machine gun mounted and the crew were all armed, they started to fire and didnt stop until the sea turned red. Also included in this tribute is Billy Stringfellow, 351field intellegence another local lad from Hindley Wigan. He was in the same camp and suffered the same fate, If anyone has any info about Billy please contact me. Only 1 man survived out of 250. The truth never came out until 1949 After the war crime trials of the Japanese no further action was taken against Captain Kawano. It was Japanese practice to put the red cross on their ammunition ships not the ships carrying POWs. Albert Thorpe & Billy Stringfellow May you rest in peace always And when they got to heaven, St Peter they did tell, "just two soldier sir, we've done our time in hell" |