The Manila Bay Ghost Ships — The Sinking of the Arisan Maru

On September 12, 1944, the Japanese transport ship Arisan Maru was torpedoed by the USS Shark in the South China Sea. What makes this tragedy uniquely obscured: the ship was carrying approximately 1,800 Allied POWs — mostly captured Americans from the Bataan Death March — crammed in the dark, airless holds below deck. The POWs had been moved from a camp in the Philippines as the Americans advanced, destined for prison camps in Japan. When the torpedo struck, the Japanese guards on deck abandoned ship. Nearly all 1,800 POWs below deck drowned — one of the worst single-incident losses of American POWs in the war. The tragedy was barely reported at the time, and the names of the dead were scattered across dozens of different unit rosters. The wreck was discovered in 2023, nearly 80 years later, by a team of deep-sea explorers at a depth of over 1,000 meters.