An interactive memorial
On the late afternoon of 7 September 1944, the Japanese transport Shinyō Maru was struck by torpedoes from the American submarine USS Paddle off Sindangan Point, Zamboanga del Norte. She was a hellship: in her holds were roughly 750 Allied prisoners of war, almost all American. Only around 82 survived the sinking, the shore guns, and the long swim. Filipino villagers found them on the beach at dawn, hid them through three weeks of shelter, and on the night of 29 September handed them — via the guerrilla chain that reached Wendell Fertig — to the rescue submarine USS Narwhal in Siari Bay.
This map distinguishes five things that are often blurred together in retellings: the attack and sinking site, the survivors' landfall, the weeks of shelter in Liloy and Sindangan, the evacuation point in Siari Bay, and the 2014 memorial marker. Each point is labeled with its source and a confidence rating.
The survivors did not save themselves. A chain of Filipino civilians, guerrilla officers, and one American submarine crew did.
Guerrilla officer · “Lolo Tome”
Local accounts in Sindangan credit Lira — known in family memory as Lolo Tome — among the Filipinos who organized shelter and food for the survivors as they were moved inland from the beach. He represents a wider network: barangay leaders, farmers, fishermen, and women who carried rice and bandages.
Hacienda hosts · Sindangan
The Macías household and their hacienda in Sindangan are remembered in oral tradition as one of the principal shelters for the surviving POWs in the days after the sinking. Barangay R. G. Macías in Sindangan today carries the family name.
Initial inland shelter
After the beach rescue, survivors were moved north along the coast toward Liloy. Lamao and the upland guerrilla camp at Campo / Maigang sheltered men for weeks while word reached Col. Wendell Fertig's headquarters.
Guerrilla chain of command
The rescue was coordinated up the Mindanao guerrilla chain under Col. Wendell W. Fertig. A subordinate commander surnamed McGee appears in several survivor accounts; the exact identity (Col. John McGee vs. a different officer of the same surname) is not firmly settled in the consulted sources. Capt. Thomas met the Narwhal at Siari Bay.
Public-domain U.S. Navy photographs of the two submarines involved, plus linked source cards where reliable imagery is not available to embed.
A marker installed in 2014 commemorates the survivors and the local rescuers near Siare Park, Sindangan. We have not embedded a photograph; we link to the public listings instead.
The broader Hellships Memorial at Subic Bay names the Shinyō Maru alongside the other prison transports. It is the institutional home for ongoing remembrance work in the Philippines.
Image policy. This project uses only public-domain U.S. Navy photographs or linked source cards. The widely re-shared image labeled “SS Shinyō Maru” on some encyclopedic sites depicts a 1911 NYK passenger liner that was sold and scrapped in 1936 — it is not the 1944 hellship — and is intentionally excluded here.
Every coordinate and date is footnoted to a primary or archival source. Where the record disagrees with itself, we say so on the map and on this list.