A hell ship is a ship with extremely unpleasant living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and Romushas (Asian forced labourers) out of the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore during World War II. The POWs were taken to Japan, Taiwan, Manchuria, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma or Siam to be used as forced labor. In Japanese, they are known as jigoku-sen (地獄船?), with the same literal meaning.
Read more about Hell Ship: Early Use of The Term, Japanese Hell Ships, Lisbon Maru, Rakuyo Maru, Suez Maru, Shinyo Maru, Junyō Maru, Maros Maru, Oryoku Maru, Enoura Maru, Brazil Maru
Famous quotes containing the words hell and/or ship:
“His firm stanzas hang like hives in hell
Or what hell was, since now both heaven and hell
Are one, and here, O terra infidel.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)