Everything tagged: Lisbon Maru

James Percival Whitham appears in the 1941 Jurors List as Acting Branch Manager of Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada. He married Beatrice Lenora Brouwer and they later had a baby boy, Jonathan G. Whitham (1941-1944) born on 30 November 1941 at Matilda Hospital.

During the Battle of Hong Kong, Whitham was a member of the HKVDC and had been transferred to the Middlesex Company on 17 December 1941 as a lieutenant. He was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941.

Mark Wavell, Joan Walkden's cousin, writes:

Her husband Frank was on the Lisbon Maru and survived initially but died of pneumonia in camp at Kobe, he is buried in the war graves cemetery in Yokohama.

My wife's great uncle. Served HMS Tamar captured by Japanese invading forces 25 Dec 1941. Died on ss Lisbon Maru 02 Oct 1942

We would like to fill in the gap between capture and his death  eg - which camp was he held in, are there any documentary references to Thomas, mention in memoires etc

On 26 August 1939 Fred Woodhead set sail from Southampton to Hong Kong on the Viceroy of India together with a number of other "Crown Agents" who were members of the Hong Kong Police.  After the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941 he was imprisoned in Sham Shui Po POW Camp.  He was on the Lisbon Maru on 1 October 1942 when it was torpedoed and sunk by US submarine Grouper.  Fred survived and was then transferred to Osaka Camp #1, where he remained for the duration of the war.  He returned to the UK after his release and married his finacee, Miss Jeannie Smith, 3 weeks later.  Jeannie, a nurs

Andrew Salmon first came to Hong Kong in 1937 as a junior member (trumpeter) of the Royal Artillery. He fought the Japanese and was taken prisoner at Stanley in December 1941. He was in Shamshuipo camp and then was sent to Japan on the ill-fated ‘Lisbon Maru’. He survived the ship's sinking by an American submarine (USS Grouper) and was recued by Chinese fishermen from the Chusan Islands. He was subsequently recaptured, shipped to Japan and was in Osaka POW camp until the end of WWII. He was repatriated to the UK via USA/Canada.

Fought in Hong Kong in 1941, then a POW for the remainder of the war. Malnutrition in the Japanese POW camp left him blind. 

Read more about Ron in this article in The Telegraph on 8 Nov 2018:

Former prisoner of war, 103, to be oldest veteran to march at the Cenotaph

Barbara Anslow:

In 1941 my sister Mabel had a serious boyfriend in the Royal Scots Band, a pianist and clarinetist named Harry Hale (known by his second name 'Sid').

Sid survived the sinking of the Lisbon Maru, and subsequent years as a POW in Japan.