Lesson plan

Hell ship

in World War II Hell ship is a term for a ship with extremely inhumane living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and rōmusha (Asian forced slave laborers) out of the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, and Singapore in World War II. These POWs were taken to the Japanese Islands, Formosa, Manchukuo, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma, or Siam to be used as forced labor.

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Article summary

in World War II Hell ship is a term for a ship with extremely inhumane living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and rōmusha (Asian forced slave laborers) out of the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, and Singapore in World War II. These POWs were taken to the Japanese Islands, Formosa, Manchukuo, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma, or Siam to be used as forced labor.

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  3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

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