Asama Maru
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The Asama Maru ( Japanese 浅 間 丸 ) was a Japanese passenger ship that was launched in 1928 and was also known as the "Queen of the Pacific" due to its luxurious furnishings. During the Second World War it served as a troop transport and auxiliary cruiser as well as for humanitarian exchange between the warring states. In 1944 she was sunk by an American submarine .
construction
Against the background of the race for supremacy in the passenger and cargo business in the North Pacific, which took place between Japan on the one hand and the United States and Canada on the other, it was decided in October 1926 to build three large passenger ships. The construction of the Asama Maru was sponsored by the Japanese government, and the ship was designed and built almost entirely in Japan. Mitsubishi also produced two of the four marine diesel engines under license.
As one of six ships of the Asama Maru class, she was laid down on September 10, 1927 together with her sister ship, the Tatsuta Maru , in Nagasaki at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard . The launch took place on the morning of October 30, 1928, and the ship was christened by the President of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha , under whose flag it later sailed .
Although the Asama Maru was rather small compared to the European and American passenger ships of its time, it can be described as the Japanese flagship of its time. It was very luxurious and mostly furnished in a western style. The dining room was lavishly lined with Italian marble and the cabins were extremely modern. A library, a gift boutique, a hairdressing salon and a swimming pool on deck rounded off the leisure offer for travelers.
Maiden voyage
On her maiden voyage from Yokohama via Honolulu to San Francisco , she had 570 passengers and a total of around 5500 t of cargo on board: more than 5000 bales of raw silk, fish, tins of seafood and other food. It left Yokohama on October 11 at 3:00 p.m. and reached San Francisco on October 24, Black Thursday when the US stock market collapsed and the Great Depression began.
For the 3,450 nautical miles between Yokohama and Honolulu she only needed seven days, 16 hours and 34 minutes and for the 2,100 nautical miles from Honolulu to San Francisco it took four days, 15 hours and 12 minutes. This enabled her to set a new speed record for the Pacific crossing on her maiden voyage.
It ran into Los Angeles on the 30th of the month and was open for viewing the following day - an opportunity that more than 15,000 visitors took advantage of.
On November 1, she ran out with the actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford on board again.
Luxury liners
From November 1929 she was used by the shipping company Nippon Yusen Kaisha on the route between Yokohama and Honolulu. In the late 1930s, second class tickets were available for as little as $ 190 and first class tickets for as little as $ 315.
Many famous names can be found on the Asama Maru's passenger lists , such as Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin . The Danish scientist Niels Bohr and the deaf-blind American writer Helen Keller also traveled on the Asama Maru . Takeichi Nishi drove to the Summer Olympics in San Francisco on the Asama Maru in 1932 , where he won a gold medal in show jumping.
On September 2, 1937, after a routine inspection in the port of Hong Kong , the Asama Maru got caught in a typhoon with current wind speeds of up to 74 m / s. After a collision with the Italian passenger ship Conte Verde , she stranded off Kowloon .
The salvage work was extremely complex. In order to reduce the weight of the ship, the two main engines had to be removed. In addition, ten buoyancy tanks were attached to the hull underwater and the bottom was partially dredged. Therefore, the Asama Maru could not be made afloat again until March 11, 1938. In the same month it came to the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki for repairs, where it was also built. On September 15, she resumed her service and in March 1939 celebrated the hundredth crossing of the Pacific.
In the summer of 1939 was Asama Maru of four ships, with 290 of 780 Jewish refugees before a Holocaust had fled - including members of the Mir Yeshiva - from Japan to the Japanese occupied Shanghai in the Shanghai Ghetto deported or after Palestine deported have been. The members of this Talmudic academy , 70 rabbis and 350 students at the outbreak of World War II in 1939 before the Holocaust of Lithuania fled from Kėdainiai via the Trans-Siberian Railway to South East Siberian city of Nakhodka had gone and by ship to Tsuruga , translated around for Kobe to Japan to travel. This allowed them to survive.
The Asama-Maru Incident
Even after the start of the Second World War in Europe in September 1939, the Asama Maru was initially able to continue its service as usual.
Nevertheless, it was influenced by the war. On the crossing from San Francisco via Honolulu to Yokohama she was stopped on January 21, 1940 35 nautical miles off the southern tip of Chiba on the open sea by the Liverpool , a British cruiser . The British Navy had received news that part of the crew of the German luxury liner Columbus , which sank on December 19, 1939 in the face of an attack by the British destroyer Hyperion , was on board the Asama Maru . Of the 51 German passengers on board, 21 were taken, and two German passengers were able to hide in time.
In its protest against the incident, the Japanese government relied on Article 47 of the London Declaration of the Law of the Sea of 1909, which stipulates that only military personnel of warring states can be picked up from neutral ships, while the British took the position that all males between 18 and 50 years of age capable of military service could be captured. After tough negotiations, nine of the Germans were handed over to the Japanese on February 29, the rest were taken to internment camps in India . However, the incident caused a marked deterioration in relations between Japan and Britain.
The Asama Maru later helped evacuate German civilians. On June 29, 1941, she took in 666 German women, children and wounded in Indonesia and brought them to Japan.
Troop transport
Relations between Japan and the United States have deteriorated since the attempt by Japanese forces to invade French Indochina in 1940 . Nevertheless, the Asama Maru ran from Yokohama to Honolulu on July 18, 1941. It was to be the last trip for her shipping company.
While the ship was underway, due to the invasion, the US government announced that Japanese assets would be frozen and an oil embargo would be imposed on Japan. In order not to be detained in an American port, the Asama Maru then turned about 980 nautical miles east of Honolulu and called her home port Yokohama directly.
On November 30 of the same year she was used as a troop and material transporter for the Japanese Navy in preparation for Japan's entry into the war . After the USA entered the war on December 8, 1941, it drove as a troop transport mainly to Southeast Asia, which was occupied by Japan.
Humanitarian action
In May 1942 a contract was signed, based on which the Asama Maru could be used for the exchange of diplomats and civilians (employees of companies, foreign students and researchers as well as their relatives) of the warring and neutral states. In June 1942 and September 1943 there was one exchange trip between Japan and the USA, with allies and their relatives also being transported. The Asama Maru was the first ship to operate between Japan and the United States on such an assignment. In August 1942 there was a corresponding exchange between Japan and the British Empire. Since the ship had to call at neutral ports as part of this exchange program, it was temporarily decommissioned by the Navy and ran under the flag of its old shipping company.
On the first humanitarian voyage, there were 276 other passengers on board in addition to the American ambassador and his employees and relatives (143 people in total). The ship left the port of Kisarazu in Chiba on June 25 and took another 1,127 people in Hong Kong , Saigon and off Singapore . The port of destination was Lorenco Marques , then under Portuguese rule , today in Mozambique on the East African coast, where the ship arrived on July 22nd. On July 26th, she took over Japanese and Thai passengers from the Swedish Gripsholm who had come from the United States, Brazil , Mexico , Panama and other American states. Among them was the Japanese ambassador to the United States. She drove back to Japan via Singapore and reached the port of Yokohama together with the Conte Verde on August 20, 1942.
Downfall
After her humanitarian mission was over, the Asama Maru was used again as a troop transport for the Navy. In February 1943 she was equipped with sonar and was therefore able to avoid three torpedoes on a trip from Sasebo in Japan to Kaohsiung in Taiwan the following month . Damage caused by another torpedo on February 24, 1944, could be repaired in Kaohsiung.
On a convoy ride from Manila in the Philippines to Kaohsiung in Taiwan was on November 1, 1944, around 110 km southeast of the Pratas Islands in position 20 ° 17 ' N , 117 ° 38' O by the US submarine Atule by two torpedoes sunk. Although over 1,000 people were rescued, more than 500 people were killed.
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich . Königshausen & Neumann, 2000, ISBN 978-3-8260-1690-5 , pp. 398-399.
- ↑ Heinz Eberhard Maul: Japan and the Jews - Study of the Jewish policy of the Japanese Empire during the time of National Socialism 1933-1945. Dissertation, University of Bonn, 2000, digital copy , p. 199. Retrieved on June 25, 2017.
- ^ Greg Leck: Captives of Empire: the Japanese internment of allied civilians in China, 1941-1945. [Bangor, PA] 2006, Chapter: Repatriation.