Gunner 1609535 Walter GARNER 1912 - 1943. In Walter's Memory. Far East Prisoner War on Hell Ship, Suez Maru in 1943, Four generations of your family, many too young to have met, or remember you, will never forget the sacrifice you made for us.
CWGC data. Gunner 1609535 Walter GARNER. 239 Battery, 77 Heavy Anti Aircraft Regiment killed while on Japanese ship, Suez Maru 29th November 1943 aged 31. It was sunk by USS Bonefish, off Kangean Islands 6º 22' South by 116º 35' East. Japanese Captain Kawano orders the shooting of the prisoners in the water. From 14.15 – 16.30 the Minesweeper W.12 massacres the survivors using machine gun and rifles. No survivors.
Son of Benjamin and Martha Garner, husband of Hilda Mary Garner, of Edgeley, Stockport, Cheshire. Commemorated on the Singapore Memorial.
http://www.roll-of-honour.org.uk/hell_ships/suez_maru/html/database_131.html
This memorial plaque is at the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire
Extract from Suez Maru Roll of Honour (FEPOW.http://www.roll-of-honour.org.uk/hell_ships/suez_maru/
Please take time to read it. It must have been hell in that water.
In 1943, the Japanese decided to ship the sick back to Java. A total of 640 men, including a number of Japanese sick patients, were taken on board the 4,645-ton passenger-cargo ship Suez Maru. In two holds, 422 sick British (including 221 RAF servicemen) and 127 sick Dutch prisoners, including up to twenty stretcher cases, were accommodated. The Japanese patients filled the other two holds.
Escorted by a minesweeper W-12, the Suez Maru set sail from Port Amboina but while entering the Java Sea and about 327 kilometers east of Surabaya, Java, Netherlands East Indies, the vessel was torpedoed by the American submarine USS Bonefish commanded by Cdr. Tom Hogan. The ship started to list as water poured into the holds drowning hundreds, many managed to escape the holds and swam away from the sinking ship. The Japanese mine sweeper W-12 picked up the Japanese survivors, leaving between 200 and 250 men in the sea. At 14.50, the minesweeper, W-12, under orders from Captain Kawano, opened fire, using a machine gun and rifles. Rafts and lifeboats were then rammed and sunk by the W-12. The firing did not cease till all the prisoners were killed, the minesweeper then picked up speed and sped off towards Batavia (Jakarta) at 16.30 hours.
Sixty-nine Japanese had died during the attack, 93 Japanese soldiers and 205 Japanese sick patients were rescued by the Japanese. Of the 547 British and Dutch prisoners, there is reported to be one survivor, a British soldier, Kenneth Thomas, who was picked up twenty-four hours later by the Australian minesweeper HMAS Ballarat, this has not been confirmed.
