VIDEO. 80 years later, the bodies of hundreds of soldiers captured by the Montevideo Maru were found in Australia.

After eight decades of mystery discovery. The wreckage of a Japanese ship torpedoed during World War II with more than 1,000 people, mostly Australian prisoners of war, was found off the coast of the Philippines.

The Montevideo Maru, a mixed cargo ship, was sunk on July 1, 1942 by the American submarine USS Sturgeon, whose crew did not know that she was transporting prisoners to the Chinese island of Hainan, occupied by the Japanese army. Allied war.

The shipwreck was found on April 18 at a depth of more than 4,000 meters in the South China Sea, the Silentworld Foundation, an underwater archeology society, said on Saturday. The discovery came after 12 days of research using, among other things, an underwater drone equipped with sonar.

One of the greatest maritime tragedies in Australian history.

“The discovery of the Montevideo Maru closes a terrible chapter in Australia’s military and maritime history,” said John Mullen, director of Silentworld, who conducted the study with Dutch deep-sea research firm Fugro and the Australian Army. .

“Families waited years for news from their missing loved ones before learning of the tragic outcome of the sinking,” he said. Other people who died aboard the Montevideo Maru included 33 sailors from the Norwegian cargo ship Herstein (also taken prisoner by the Japanese) and about 20 Japanese guards and crew members, according to the Silentworld Foundation.

According to the same source, among the victims of the flood there are citizens of several other countries: Great Britain, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Sweden and the United States. Around 1,060 people of 14 nationalities died, including 979 Australians captured during the Battle of Rabaul, New Guinea, including at least 850 military personnel, according to the Silentworld Foundation.