USS HOUSTON
An
international investigation has been launched into the mysterious disappearance
of several second world war shipwrecks which have vanished from the bottom of
the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia. Former colonial ruler The Netherlands
has launched a probe into how two Dutch navy ships seemingly vanished from the
bed of the Java Sea, while Britain has urged Indonesia to investigate the
disappearance of three of its vessels.
Naval warships and war graves are protected under international law and
the desecration of such shipwrecks is illegal.
However Indonesia refused to take the blame Thursday for the
disappearance of the shipwrecks - lost in 1942 during the Battle of the Java
Sea and considered war graves - that investigators believe could have been
salvaged for scrap.
More than 900 Dutch and 250 Indo-Dutch sailors died during the battle in
which the Allied navies suffered a disastrous defeat by the hand of the
Imperial Japanese Navy.
Indonesian authorities have sought to distance themselves from the
mystery, saying they could not be expected to protect the sites without
assistance.
“The Dutch government cannot
blame the Indonesian government because they never asked us to protect those
ships,” said Bambang Budi Utomo, head of the National Archeological Centre
under the Ministry of Education and Culture.
“As there was no agreement or announcement, when the ships go missing,
it is not our responsibility.”
Amateur divers in 2002 discovered the long-lost wrecks of three Dutch
ships, 60 years after they sank while in action against Japanese forces.
But an international expedition that sailed to the wreck site in
preparation for next year’s 75th anniversary of the battle was shocked to
discover that the wrecks had vanished.
“The wrecks of HMNLS De Ruyter and HMNLS Java have
seemingly gone completely missing,” the Dutch defence ministry said in a
statement.
Britain expressed its distress at the disappearance of its own warships
and asked Indonesia to “take appropriate action” to protect the sites from
further disturbance.
The Guardian cited a preliminary report from an expedition to document sunken ships
which showed that the wrecks of HMS Exeter and HMS Encounter had
been almost totally removed, along with parts of HMS Electra.
The US submarine Perch had also been entirely removed, according
to the report.
Using equipment that creates a 3D map of the sea floor, the report
showed that where a wreck “was once located there is a large ‘hole’ in the
seabed”.
The four vessels sank when
Japan’s navy overpowered British, American, Dutch and Australian sailors in
what was one of the Allied forces’ most disastrous defeats.
Utomo said the looting “must have been going on for years for such a
huge ship to disappear”.
Indonesia’s navy said the ships should not have been disturbed as they
were war graves.
“However, the Indonesian navy cannot monitor all areas all the time,”
navy spokesman Gig Jonias Mozes Sipasulta said.
“If they ask why the ships are missing, I’m going to ask them back, why
didn’t they guard the ships?”
The seas around Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia are a graveyard for
more than 100 ships and submarines sunk during the war. For years, scavengers
have surreptitiously located the wrecks and stolen parts, including steel,
aluminium and brass.
A recreational diving school in Malaysia told the New Straits Times
last year that shipwrecks were being blown apart by with explosives by people
posing as fishermen before their metal is removed.
The US military found two years ago that there had been an “unauthorised
disturbance of the grave site” of the USS Houston, which sank in the
Battle of Sunda Strait, also in the Java Sea. It is the grave for nearly 650
sailors and marines.
Theo Vleugels, director of the Dutch War Graves Foundation, told the ANP
news agency: “The people who died there should be left in peace.”
Agence France-Presse, The Guardian
This article appeared in the
South China Morning Post print edition as:
shipwrecks disappear from
seabed
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