A new website has been created by a group of dedicated individuals with a mission to ensure those brave men who lived and served on the Islands of New Britain, New Ireland and the surrounding Islands of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea will never be forgotten.
This dedicated group is in the process of forming the Montevideo Maru Foundation which will be used to increase public awareness of Australia’s Greatest Maritime Disaster and garner support for a search to locate the wreck where so many Australian men lay forgotten.
It was on the 1 July 1942 that the American submarine USS Sturgeon sighted the Japanese transport ship "Montevideo Maru" of some 7,267 ton which she sent to the bottom at 0240 hours. The skipper Lt. Comdr.William L Wright, did not know, that the transport was at that time carrying some 1,035 passengers, made up of Australian Army Personal, from the 2/22 Battalion of the 8th Division, Australian Army and also some Army Nurses and other civilian's personal that were being transferred to Japan.
