Last Stop Nagasaki! (1991)

The book is about Australian prisoners-of-war that were being held in Nagasaki at the time of the dropping of the atomic bomb on that city.

There were two camps, Fukuoka Camp 2 on Koyagi Island in Nagasaki Bay, and Fukuoka Camp 14. The second camp was only 1750 meters from the epicenter of the bomb's explosion, although it did have 24 survivors. It had housed 70 Australians, 2 Americans, and some British and Dutch prisoners.

The brutality of some Japanese military is described in relation to prisoners-of-war that were used to build a railway linking Burma and Thailand. 13,000 British, Australian, American and Dutch prisoners-of-war died during that construction, and over 70,000 Asian civilian laborers were also killed.

Some prisoners-of-war were also killed by the actions of US submarines. On June 21, 1944, the Tamahoko Maru was sunk with the loss of around 600 prisoners-of-war from Australian, the US, England, and the Dutch and Netherlands East Indies.

Two ships, the Kachidori Maru and the Rokyhu Maru were carrying prisoners of war on the second of September, 1944. Both ships were sunk, and almost 500 died from the Kachidori Maru, and 971 died from the Rokyu Maru.

I don't know, though, if these ships were marked in any way to indicate they were carrying prisoners-of-war. If they weren't marked in any special way, then it's not surprising they were sunk, but if they were marked then they shouldn't have been attacked.

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