Floating Dungeons of the Far East: Japanese Hell Ships of World War Two and the Sinking of the Oryoku Maru
No light. No air. No water. Temperatures in excess of one-hundred and fifty degrees. The smell of excrement and piss. Hundreds of filthy, naked and sweaty men with only room to sit cross legged on the floor. No room to lie down. Not enough room to stand up. If heat exhaustion and dehydration don’t kill you then you may be lucky enough to lose your mind and go insane and into a blissful oblivion before someone strangles you, or bashes your head against the metal walls just to get you to shut up. And then there are the beatings and the periodic executions, performed for sport by your sadistic captors on deck who will blindfold you, have you kneel and then slice off your head at the neck with the curved blades of their samurai swords and then laugh as your severed head rolls off the deck and floats out into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Maybe, just maybe you’ll be “lucky” enough to live through the be...