Francis McKane |
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and on the next day they attacked Hong Kong and Francis McCain was in the thick of it. He volunteered to act as spotter for his artillery battery, which placed him in an obsolete biplane flying into the face of the fighting to observe the effects of his unit’s artillery fire. His battery was the last one to fall in the defense of Hong Kong and he became a prisoner of war. In September 1942, 1816 prisoners that had been captured when Hong Kong fell nine months before were loaded on the Japanese transport Lisbon Maru.
The Lisbon
Maru was called the Hell Ship as the POWs were kept in conditions of filth,
disease, and malnutrition. They were being transported to Japan as slave labor.
On 30 October, 1942, the Lisbon Maru
was spotted by the US Submarine Grouper
off of Shanghai. The sub maneuvered during the night and then the next morning
fired six torpedoes and immediately came under attack from Japanese patrol boats
and aircraft. The Grouper dived deep and quickly left the area. One of its torpedoes
struck the Lisbon Maru. The US sub of
course had no idea there were Allied prisoners of war aboard. The Lisbon
Maru began taking on water and the prisoners were locked below decks with
no food or water and stifling heat. On 2
October the ship finally sank and there was a chaotic dash by the prisoners to
try to escape. Some made it over the side, some escaped through port
holes. Francis McKane was among the prisoners
that managed to get off the sinking ship.
The Japanese were shooting the escaping men and many never had a chance
to get off the ship and drowned; some 846 men died that tragic day. The prisoners that reached the water swam
three miles through shark infested waters, eventually making their way to a
small island. The men that reached the island were again taken prisoner by the
Japanese on 5 October. They spent the
rest of the war as slave laborers in Japan.
Francis worked in the shipyards in Osaka. Over 200 died during the
first winter from diphtheria, diarrhea, pneumonia, and malnutrition.
The bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came just in time to save Francis McKane and the surviving prisoners who were by that time walking skeletons, with their numbers shrinking daily. Even with the Japanese capitulation he had a long road to get back home. He was taken by hospital ship to Canada first. Doctors in Canada told him that he would not survive, that malnutrition and disease had so damaged his body that they had little hope of his recovery. Francis did survive and return back to Scotland to have a family and his son Joseph, joined the McCain DNA project and found his cousins, including the Mississippi McCains.
The bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came just in time to save Francis McKane and the surviving prisoners who were by that time walking skeletons, with their numbers shrinking daily. Even with the Japanese capitulation he had a long road to get back home. He was taken by hospital ship to Canada first. Doctors in Canada told him that he would not survive, that malnutrition and disease had so damaged his body that they had little hope of his recovery. Francis did survive and return back to Scotland to have a family and his son Joseph, joined the McCain DNA project and found his cousins, including the Mississippi McCains.
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