Night Voyage Vanished in Deep Sea: The Sinking of a Transport Ship off Taiwan (July 1945)

Night Voyage Vanished in Deep Sea: The Sinking of a Transport Ship off Taiwan (July 1945)
At the end of the Pacific War, Japan lost control of the sea, and transport ships from the south were sunk one after another. This work is a recollection by a survivor of a small transport ship that roared to a halt off the coast of Taiwan in July 1945. The survivor recounts his experience of being struck by lightning at night and being thrown into the dark sea after the ship caught fire. The process of losing consciousness, drifting, and being rescued by a destroyer is a condensed version of the reality of a "death struggle at sea," not on the battlefield. The publication of the book in 1974 is significant in that it unearths the "memories of the dead at sea," which have been silenced for 30 years since the end of World War II. While war literature depicts battles on the ground and atomic bombings, this work focuses on the nameless people who sank at sea and makes us reconsider war as an "invisible death. The night off the coast of Taiwan symbolizes the boundary between Japa
n's defeat and its memory.