Welcome Joni
Losing two Uncles as POWs of the Japanese is very sad. As members of 680th Ordnance Company and 803rd Engineer Battalion respectively, they seem to have both been captured very early in the war.
I don't now whether you have already found this information:
Quote:
Shinyo Maru – On August 20, 1944, 750 American POWs who had been on work details near Lasang, Mindanao were loaded into the cargo holds of a freighter marked only as "86" for transport to Manila. The 3,801 gross ton Japanese Army transport No. 86, Tateishi Maru, made a slow and devious trip arriving at Zamboanga, Mindanao on September 5, 1944. The POWs remained in the holds of transport No. 86 for two more days. On September 7th, the POWs were moved to the Shinyo Maru. The Shinyo Maru left Zamboanga in convoy on September 7, 1944; however, the USS Paddle was waiting near Sindangan Point, Mindanao where it torpedoed the Shinyo Maru late on the same day. The ship sank quickly, trapping most prisoners in the holds. Others were executed by the guards during the scramble to evacuate the ship or while in the water awaiting rescue. Eventually 82 survivors swam to shore to be rescued by Filipino civilians and hidden onshore until they could be evacuated by submarine. (See Rice and Salt by John McGee for details of the sinking and the evacuation of the 82 survivors.)
The Shinyo Maru was an antiquated freighter pressed into Japanese service after its capture at Shanghai in 1941. It was built as the Clan MacKay in Glasgow, Scotland in 1894, and was much smaller than the ships listed in paragraph 1 above (312 ft. long by 40.2 ft. wide and only 2,600 tons). The following photograph shows the Shinyo Maru when it was still the Clan MacKay.
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http://www.west-point.org/family/jap...pow/photos.htm American POWs Rescued After Shinyo Maru Sinking by USS Paddle: SubmarineSailor.com
I have a couple of books on the hellships, mentioned in the other thread, and will have look through them a little later.