A forgotten World War II atrocity. A remarkable survival story. A tribute to courage, endurance, and humanity.
In October 1942, the Japanese transport ship Lisbon Maru carrying 1,816 British prisoners of war from occupied Hong Kong toward forced labour camps in Japan was torpedoed off the coast of China by an American submarine. The POWs were trapped below deck in sealed holds and abandoned to their fate. Hundreds drowned, suffocated, or were machine-gunned as they tried to escape. It is one of the darkest and least-known tragedies of the Pacific War.
Among the survivors was Andrew Salmon - a Cockney boy who joined the British Army at fourteen, served in Hong Kong, and endured the horrors of Japanese POW camps, the sinking of the Lisbon Maru and the years in labour camps afterwards. Drawing on Andrew Salmon's diaries, letters, and unfinished manuscript, his son Ken Salmon reconstructs an extraordinary story of suffering, survival, comradeship, and resilience.
Surviving the Lisbon Maru is both a gripping personal memoir and an important historical record. It tells of the terror inside the sinking ship, the bravery of prisoners trying to save each other, and the courage of Chinese fishermen from the Zhoushan islands who risked their own lives to rescue survivors from the sea.
But this is also the story of what came after: years of slave labour in Japan, the emotional scars carried home by survivors, and one man's lifelong determination to ensure that the dead - and those who saved the living - would never be forgotten.
