Director: Tony Matthews
Country: Australia
Runtime: 60’
Language: English
Year: 2010
On 14 May 1943, the newly commissioned Australian hospital ship Centaur was steaming north en route to New Guinea; most of the 332 people aboard the ship were asleep in their bunks. All was quiet, the sea quite calm and the watch-keepers were looking forward to getting back to their bunks. Yet, not far away Lieutenant Commander Hajime Nakagawa was stealthily moving his Japanese submarine I-177 into attack position, carefully tracking and noting his prey’s speed and direction.
At 4.10am, when Nakagawa ordered the attack to commence, he carved for himself a dark niche among the world’s blackest war criminals. Virtually no other maritime action of World War Two did so much to inflame Australian opinion against the Japanese. A solitary torpedo hissed from the submarine’s housing into the Centaur hitting its oil-fuel tank. The ship burst into flames, quickly leaned over and began to sink. In the minutes that followed 268 innocent non-combatants, crew, nurses, doctors and orderlies were killed.
Only 64 oil-stained people survived the torpedo attack after spending over thirty hours in shark-infested waters. This documentary reveals the full details of the sinking of the Centaur through the eyes and memories of the survivors and it reveals Japanese Government admission that they have no evidence to support the theory that the ship had been carrying anything which might declassify it as a non-combatant vessel.
The remains of the Centaur lie in deep water south off Moreton Island, Queensland, and a commemorative plaque was lowered onto the bow's vessel at 5.55am of 12 January 2010.
