Event Detail

Naval History Seminar

Lucky 73: USS Pampanito's Unlikely Rescue of Allied POWs in WWII with author Aldona Sendzikas

During WWII, USSS Pampanito rescued 73 British and Australian POWs from the South China Sea.  This rescue happened 3 days after she sank one of the transport ships on which the Allied prisoners were being ferried to Japan.  The chain of events that led to this rescue is truly remarkable.  Captured in 1942, forced to spend 15 months constructing the Burma-Thai Railroad, and then loaded onto floating concentration camps - hellships, as the ywere called - the prisoners were in the wrong place at the wrong time when Pampanito and her wolf pack attacked a Japanese convoy.  Returning to the coordinates a few days later, the crew was astonished to discover survivors in the water from among the more than 2,200 prisoners who had been aboard the Japanese ships.  Using first hand accounts she discovered while working as a curator for Pampanito, Aldona Sendzikas began an odyssey of tracking down one of the most incredible rescue stories of the Pacific War.