Beazley urges hunt for lost war ship

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Beazley urges hunt for lost war ship

By Ilya Gridneff and Papua New Guinea Correspondent

Former Labor leader Kim Beazley has joined a group of relatives urging the federal government to launch a search for the wreck of Australia's worst maritime tragedy.

Families who lost loved ones onboard the torpedoed World War II Japanese prison ship have set up the Montevideo Maru Memorial Committee to mark the tragedy they say has been overlooked by officials.

Beazley, now lecturing at the University of Western Australia, is patron of the group that wants a government response similar to the recently found HMAS Sydney, another World War II sea tragedy that claimed 645 lives.

Beazley's uncle, the Reverend Sydney Beazley, a resident of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea's East New Britain province, was on board the ship that has never been located.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett's grandfather was also on board.

"The Montevideo Maru sinking is Australia's most devastating loss at sea, but is a quiet part of public consciousness of World War II history," Beazley said.

"The military personnel lost in particular were a product of the first desperate efforts of the Australian Government to defend our immediate approaches.

"The Japanese occupation of Rabaul produced many heroic Australian efforts at resistance and escape and an enormous Australian tragedy, both from massacres on land and the huge loss of life at sea," he said.

The Montevideo Maru carried 845 troops from Australia's Lark Force that was defending Rabaul and 208 civilian men, taken prisoner of war after Japan invaded.

The unmarked Japanese ship left occupied Rabaul on June 22, 1942, but nine days later on July 1, an American submarine torpedoed it off the Philippines coast.

Montevideo Maru Committee members want the government to officially recognise the sinking, to determine precisely who was on board at the time and to encourage further research into events in Rabaul that led to the tragedy.

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