Help please in identifying wartime photos for book on Lisbon Maru Incident.

Submitted by Brian Finch on Tue, 03/21/2017 - 17:15

Photograph Query

Readers will no doubt be familiar with the Lisbon Maru Incident in 1942 in which hundreds of British pows were killed after the ship carrying them was torpedoed and the Japanese battened down the hatches then shot at the prisoners as they tried to escape with their lives.  Wholesale slaughter was averted by the courageous actions of Chinese fishermen from the local islands of Zhoushan who saved as many of the pows as they could.  Following Tony Banham’s excellent book on this tragedy “The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru”, the Hong Kong Lisbon Maru Association carried out their own research and published a book in Chinese on the same subject, but this time seen through the eyes of the Chinese fishermen and their families.  The book includes a fascinating and detailed account of how they hid three of the pows in a cave under the noses of the Japanese, then helped get them to the mainland with the help of several anti-Japanese resistance guerrilla units and on to the wartime capital of Chongqing where they were able to broadcast to the world and tell them about the Incident.

I have translated this book into English and it is being prepared for publication.  There are a number of photos in the original whose copyright holders I cannot identify.  Because the copyright is unknown I cannot upload them to the website, but here are the links to two of them.

The first shows Japanese troops landing on Tsing Yi in December 1941 and can be seen at the following link:  https://read01.com/KyNN80.html.    The image in question is the first photograph on the wabpage and shows a group of Japanese soldiers taken from behind landing from a boat.  This image was also used in an exhibition held in 2015 in the Museum of Coastal Defence.  The exhibition was run jointly by the Museum and the Guangdong Museum of Revolutionary History.  The Coastal Defence Museum does not know who owns the copyright.  I have written to the Guangdong Museum of Revolutionary History, but have not had a response.

The second shows Japanese armoured troops fighting in the “128 Incident” or the “First Shanghai Incident” in 1932.  This image can be seen on the following link which describes it as a Japanese Type 89 tank: https://www.flickr.com/photos/deckarudo/6302204318/   The website sources this image to swing.be.  I have checked with the Belgian company Swingverkoop which bought swing.be some years ago, but does not own the copyright of this picture.

There are two other pictures that I cannot find anywhere on the internet. 

The first is a group photograph of soldiers from the Winnipeg Grenadiers wearing tin helmets taken two days before their departure for Hong Kong in 1941.  The Winnipeg Grenadiers no longer exists.  The Royal Winnipeg Rifles have some archive material belonging to the Grenadiers and the curator has promised to see if he can find a copy but neither he nor I are optimistic.

The second is a thumbnail portrait of Miao Kaiyun in uniform.  Miao was a key figure in arranging the escape and onward journey to Chongqing of the three pows.  This picture was originally provided to the Hong Kong Lisbon Maru Association by an official from Zhoushan.  The name of the official is not known, and in any case he or she is likely to have moved on by now.  I have written to Zhoushan but have not had a reply to my enquiry.

I should be grateful if any reader can help identify either of these images which might help me locate the copyright holders, or indeed any other information about the images.

Although I cannot upload these images to the website, I can provide copies by E-mail to anyone who thinks they might be able to help.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Brian Finch

With the first photo that you gaethe link to, there is a WeChat account called 'szliushen'.  Is it worth trying to track down whoever answers that account?

breskvar

Dear breskvar

Thanks for your helpful advice.  I have never used WeChat.  I found a link at the side, but this seemed to take me to a blank page inviting me to open an account.  However, I did find a "Contact Us" link which opens an E-mail to the Webmaster, so I've now written to the Webmaster and hope I might get a response.

Thanks again, as I seem to have missed this previously.