by Rei Kimura

On the 1st of April 1945, a Japanese hospital ship that had been given 'safe passage' by the Allies, in the dead of night, was mistaken for a military vessel and torpedoed by the American submarine 'Queenfish'. It sank within minutes taking almost all of the 2007 passengers to their watery graves. This is the gripping story of the Awa Maru, the little known 'Titanic of Japan'. Follow the journey of Kyoko Tanaka, whose parents and brother had been passengers on the Awa Maru as she set sail on her own voyage of discovery. She travels from Japan to Singapore in search of the truth and a 'piece of her history' and makes poignant and touching discoveries of the lives of her parents and some of the other families as they prepared to board the Awa Maru. The lives of the doomed passengers of the Awa Maru and the events of that horrific night when they perished are all told in this book as never before.