Eighty years ago, on Oct. 24, 1944, Capt. Festus G. Watson from Portland sailed toward Japan aboard a ship called the Arisan Maru. Crammed into the ship’s cargo hold with him were nearly 1,800 other Allied prisoners of war (POWs), including 10 fellow Mainers.

These soldiers hailed from across the state and represented multiple military branches. Sgt. Ellery A. Barter from Lincoln and five others belonged to the Army. Pvt. Harold L. Morrison from Washington County and three other Mainers served in the Army Air Force. Vassalboro native James C. Oster was in the Navy.

The Mainers were also survivors. Most had endured the notorious Bataan Death March and then over two years in brutal POW camps in the Philippines. But now, the sight of American airplanes over Manila signaled a shift in the tide of war.

Forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in the Philippines just four days earlier in a massive amphibious assault. MacArthur fulfilled his famous promise: “I shall return.” Liberation seemed just weeks or months away.

What the sick, starving POWs locked inside the Arisan Maru didn’t know was another Mainer, 21-year-old Richard W. Wansky from Sebago Lake, was aboard a submarine nearby. Minutes later, a torpedo fired from Wansky’s submarine, the Shark II (SS 314), would fatally cripple the Arisan Maru.

A staggering 1,791 of the 1,800 POWs died in the explosion or during the minutes and hours that followed. Sadly, all 11 Mainers perished. This little-known tragedy remains the deadliest friendly fire incident in U.S. military history. It’s time we remembered these brave soldiers.

Only nine POWs on the Arisan Maru survived. Japanese ships recaptured four from the ocean. The other five miraculously floated 250 miles to China, where sympathetic villagers nursed the men back to health and helped them reach a remote American base.

Meanwhile, Richard W. Wansky and his 86 fellow submariners suffered a fate that made the tragedy even worse. The Shark II didn’t survive the Oct. 24 encounter, sunk by a devastating depth charge attack that sent the submarine to the bottom of the South China Sea. The Japanese destroyer Harukaze announced the kill in a radio message, which U.S. radio spies in Hawaii intercepted and quickly decoded.

Vice Adm. Charles Lockwood, commander of Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet, documented the Shark II sinking in a Nov. 27, 1944, memorandum. In his memo, Lockwood suggested that instead of fleeing the scene, the Shark II “may well have been sunk while attempting to rescue American prisoners of war.” Any effort to save POWs floating in the ocean, while heroic and noble, proved fatal.

As we mark the 80th anniversary of this grim chapter of American history, may we remember Festus G. Watson, Richard W. Wansky and all the Mainers who gave their lives on the Arisan Maru and Shark II. Let us honor and be worthy of the price they paid for freedom and democracy. Their sacrifices, like those of so many others, demand nothing less.