Film tells war story of tragic downfall and heroic rescue – World

The cargo ship Lisbon Maru was converted into a troop transport by the Japanese army during World War II. In October 1942, it was torpedoed by a US submarine off the coast of the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang while transporting about 1,800 British prisoners of war from Hong Kong to Japan.

The prisoners of war were locked in the holds and left to drown. Some managed to escape, but Japanese soldiers shot at them. Chinese fishermen heard the incident from the shore and rushed to rescue 384 British soldiers. The ship sank and 828 prisoners of war lost their lives, were shot or drowned.

The ship sank, the prisoners and their stories for decades.

In 2015, when President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the United Kingdom, he delivered a speech at a state banquet in which he described the rescue of British prisoners of war by Chinese fishermen as an example of friendly ties that would never fade and an invaluable asset to China-UK relations.

In recent years there have been efforts to draw attention to the rescue operation, including through the documentary film “The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru,” which hit theaters on Friday.

Filmmaker Fang Li spent eight years producing the film. Using rare footage and historical archives, the documentary tells the heroic and tragic story of those lost and those saved.