Most Australians might never have heard of the Montevideo Maru. The name of the Japanese ship is not one of those icons imprinted on the country’s consciousness — and yet it touched the lives of two prominent Labor politicians.
Former rock star turned environment minister Peter Garrett and ex-Labor leader Kim Beazley both lost family members who were prisoners of war on the ship when it was sunk by an American submarine in 1942.
Beazley's uncle, Syd, was captured when he was working as a Methodist missionary in Papua New Guinea. He died before his daughter, Pauline, was born.
According to Pauline, Syd and his brothers — including Kim Beazley senior — were all spitting images of each other.
Mr Beazley told ninemsn: "Syd looked a lot like my Uncle Phil, who I do remember".
"Phil came home about the time the news of the Montevideo Maru's sinking had reached us," he said.
"When he walked in the door, my cousin thought it was her father returning.
"She had memorised her dad’s photo and she wept for a day when she found out it wasn’t him.
"She was only about four at the time."
Mr Beazley said when he was the defence minister he researched the sinking of the Montevideo Maru.
"It was quite stark reading the log of the American submarine captain," he said.
"The irony was the Sturgeon was just about out of ammunition and then along comes this easy, fat target.
"He emptied the torpedos and then headed for Fremantle which is fairly ironic.
"He would never have known … my father never bore [the submarine commander] any ill."
The sinking of the ship also touched another prominent Australian many years later. Peter Garrett's grandfather Tom was also killed and the loss prompted the former lead singer of Midnight Oil to write about it in his 1990s hit "In the Valley".
His opening line is: "My grandfather went down with the Montevideo … the rising sun sent him floating to his rest".
The sinking of the Montevideo Maru was one of countless tragic incidents in a brutal war but in the lives of two prominent Australians and the families of the others who died, it lives on in the memory and in their present-day lives.
Front page
RSS Feed