Pacific War
Before Japan's entry into the Second World War she was intercepted by the Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Liverpool 35 miles (56 km) from the coast of Niijima on January 21, 1940. Alerted to reports that Axis sailors in the United States were preparing to arrange transport to Germany, the British Government had authorised the C-in-C, China Station to direct a warship to detain certain passengers providing the coast of Japan was not within sight. The Liverpool removed 21 of the ship's passengers believed to be survivors of the scuttled German liner Columbus. The Government of Japan condemned it as an abuse of belligerent rights and formally protested the action, which further escalated tensions between the two countries.
In 1941 the ship became a troopship for the Imperial Japanese Navy.
In the summer of 1942, it was used in the repatriation of the prewar diplomatic staffs of Japan and the Allied nations, the exchange taking place at what is now Maputo.
In transporting Allied prisoners, it was amongst those vessels which earned the epithet "hell ships."
On November 1, 1944, Asama Maru was torpedoed and sunk by the US submarine USS Atule in the South China Sea 100 miles (160 km) south of the island of Pratas.
Read more about this topic: Asama Maru
Famous quotes containing the words pacific and/or war:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)