Lisbon Maru was completed on 8 July 1920 at the Yokohama Dock Company shipyard in Yokohama, Japan as Yard No. 70, entering service for a major Japanese shipping line, Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, and registered at the port of Tokyo.[2] [3]
The ship was 4451NaN1 long, with a beam of 581NaN1 and a depth of 341NaN1. It measured and 4,308 NRT. Twin propellers were powered by a pair of triple expansion steam engines with a combined rating of 632 nhp, giving a service speed of 12kn. The engines and four boilers were made by the shipbuilder.
On her final voyage, the Lisbon Maru was carrying 700 Japanese Army personnel and 1,816 British prisoners of war captured after the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941. The POWs were held in "appalling conditions ... [those] at the bottom of the hold ... showered by the diarrhoea of sick soldiers above".[4]
On 1 October 1942, the ship was torpedoed by the submarine while travelling through the South China Sea.[5] The Japanese troops were evacuated from the ship but the POWs were not; instead the hatches were battened down above them and they were left on the listing ship. After 24 hours, as it became apparent that the ship was sinking, the POWs were able to break through the hatch covers. Some were able to escape from the ship before it sank. The ladder from one of the holds to the deck failed, and the Royal Artillery POWs in the hold could not escape; they were last heard singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". Survivors reported that Japanese guards first fired on the POWs who reached the deck; and that other Japanese ships used machine guns to fire at POWs who were in the water. Later, however, after some Chinese fishermen started rescuing survivors, the Japanese ships also rescued survivors.
The British government insisted that over 800 of these men died either directly as a result of the sinking, or from being shot or otherwise killed by the Japanese while swimming away from the wreck.[6] The ship was not marked to alert Allied forces to the nature of its passengers. The Japanese government insisted that British prisoners were in fact not deliberately killed by Japanese soldiers and criticised the British statement.
A Lisbon Maru memorial was placed in the chapel of Stanley Fort, Hong Kong. It was moved to the chapel of St Stephen's College with Hong Kong's change in sovereignty.
A reunion of Lisbon Maru survivors was held on board on 2 October 2007 to mark the 65th anniversary of their escape. Six former prisoners attended, alongside many families of the escapees.
In 2021, a memorial for the Lisbon Maru was placed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, and the unveiling was attended by over 600 family members and military personnel to remember those who died.
The album Tarot Sport by the British electronic band Fuck Buttons features a track named "The Lisbon Maru". Band member Benjamin John Power's grandfather survived the torpedoing of the ship.[7] The album War, Peace and Diplomacy by Tom Hickox features a track named "The Lisbon Maru",[8] in which a survivor of the sinking relays his tale to a barman.