Memorial to sinking of Japanese ship The Lisbon Maru survived by Shipston man unveiled in China

IN October 1942, an unmarked Japanese ship, the Lisbon Maru was sunk in the South China Sea by an American submarine. Some 1,800 Allied prisoners of war were on board and hundreds died.

Amongst the survivors was Cyril Mace, who was born and raised in Shipston. He and a number of other survivors were rescued by Chinese fishermen who lived on islands near to where the ship sank.

On 20th May, over 82 years after the sinking of the Lisbon Maru, families of some of the men who were saved by the fishermen attended the unveiling of a memorial to commemorate the incident on the Qingbang Island of Dongji, Zhoushan, on the east coast of China.

Amongst these was Barbara Harris and her husband Philip. Cyril was Barbara’s father, and earlier this year she gave a speech at the Chinese embassy thanking the help of the fisherman in saving her fathers life and that of some of his comrades.

After an 11-and-a-half-hour flight and then a three-and-a-half hour boat journey from Shanghai, Barbara and Philip arrived at the site of the memorial. Also in attendance were senior figures from the British Embassy in China.

“We had a half-mile walk up the mountain to get to the site, which was a bit long and hot,” Philip told the Herald.

“There’s no actual route, it’s only a trek to where they’ve got the monument. We had to have at least half-an-hour’s walk uphill on a rocky path. It was mostly in Chinese, but they were all translated for us. We had a translator with us all the time who helped us with the language.”

The memorial depicts fishermen reaching into the sea to help pull PoWs out of the water. The idea was several years in the making and went to the very top of Chinese politics.

“Denise Nguyen, whose father was the last survivor of the sinking, was there too. Her father lived to be 101. She’s the one who really started the ball rolling by writing a letter to President Xi. Her father said that there should be a memorial to the fishermen and what happened,” Philip explained.

“Apparently the area where these islands are is where the president started his political career. He was district governor. The president then wrote to the ambassador in London and told him to take a letter from the president to Denise. It all started from this hand-written note.”

Cyril came back to Shipston after the war to be a postman for many years, and rarely spoke about his time in the war.

“We are proud that it happened and that our family is part of it. Our connection was my wife’s father, which is a very close connection,” said Philip.

“On the way over, we were in the lounge at Heathrow and Barbara got a piece of paper, a photocopy of a piece of paper that some of the prisoners on the way back from America had written their addresses on to give to each other. One of the names on the piece of paper was obviously Cyril, but another one was the grandfather of somebody on the trip.

“His grandfather and Barbara’s father had met on the boat coming back from New York and had just exchanged addresses, so this was an amazing coincidence.”

Philip added that there is now an association for those who had family members involved in the sinking as a way for them to find out more about their stories.