was a 6,377-ton Japanese merchant vessel, used as a transport ship and

hospital ship A hospital ship is a ship designated for primary function as a floating medical treatment facility or hospital. Most are operated by the military forces (mostly navies) of various countries, as they are intended to be used in or near war zones. I ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. She was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of some 3,700 lives on 27 September 1944.

History

''Ural Maru'' was a combined cargo/passenger vessel owned and operated by Osaka Shosen (the predecessor to Mitsui OSK Lines). She was completed in 1929 by the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyards and was in regularly scheduled service between Kobe and

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

in Japan and the port of

Dairen Dalian () is a major sub-provincial port city in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, and is Liaoning's second largest city (after the provincial capital Shenyang) and the third-most populous city of Northeast China. Located on the ...

in the Kwantung Leased Territory on the Asian mainland. ''Ural Maru'' made her first voyage on 12 April 1929. Her civilian career was relatively uneventful, although she was damaged in Osaka by a

typhoon A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...

in 1934 In 1937, after the start of the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

, ''Ural Maru'' was requisitioned by the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

and converted into a

from 13 October 1937 to February 1938, returning sick and wounded soldiers from the front back to Japan. ''Ural Maru'' was briefly returned to commercial service, but was requisitioned again by the Imperial Japanese Army in November 1941, and used primarily as a military transport to carry troops and military supplies from the Army’s primary staging area of Hiroshima in Japan to various ports in southeast Asia, including Saigon,

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

, the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, Rabaul, Rangoon and

Palau Palau,, officially the Republic of Palau and historically ''Belau'', ''Palaos'' or ''Pelew'', is an island country and microstate in the western Pacific. The nation has approximately 340 islands and connects the western chain of the ...

in the initial stages of the war. In February 1943, she was converted to a hospital ship again, and was painted white with a large red cross, as per international regulations. On 3 April 1943, when evacuating 50 wounded soldiers from Guadalcanal, ''Ural Maru'' was bombed by

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers and lightly damaged. She managed to return to Osaka, where the damage was much publicized. 321st Squadron, 90th Bomber Group, had on 3 April bombed and damaged Hospital Ship "Ural Maru" off New Hanover Island in the Bismark Group (300 km N-W of Rabaul)]. Contemporary Japanese press labeled the attack on a clearly marked hospital ship carrying civilians as a war crime. In response to the Australian protest against the sinking of the hospital ship ''Centaur'', the Japanese had lodged a counter-protest about attacks on, and the sinking of a number of their own hospital ships, including the ''Ural Maru''. On her last voyage, ''Ural Maru'' had departed Singapore bound for Takao in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

and had called on Kuching and

Miri ) , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = , subdivision_type2 = Division , subdivision_name2 ...

in Japanese-occupied

Sarawak Sarawak (; ) is a state of Malaysia. The largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak is located in northwest Borneo Island, and is bordered by the Malaysian state of Sabah to the northeast, ...

, where she loaded Japanese wounded, nurses and a number of " comfort women". In addition there were ten unusual passengers – Indian National Army cadets of Indian origin on their way to Japan for military training. Only one of them, Bishan Singh, died in the sinking. One of the survivors, Ramesh S. Benegal, went on to become an officer in the Indian Air Force in independent India and retired as an Air Commodore. He provided a first-person account of the sinking of the ''Ural Maru'' in his book "Burma to Japan with Azad Hind - A War Memoir". The complement of passengers is also based on his account. ''Ural Maru'' was torpedoed in the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by the shores of South China (hence the name), in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan and northwestern Phi ...

and sunk on 27 September 1944 by the American submarine approximinately west of

Luzon Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...

at coordinates ()Jordan

References

* * *

External links

Maritime Disasters of World War II
"Burma to Japan with Azad Hind - A War Memoir" (Lancer Publishers, New Delhi, copyright Meera R. Benegal, 2009).

History

References

External links

Notes

See also