Hawaii marker to honor hundreds of WWII prisoners of war

US Army Air Corps veteran Daniel Crowley endured more than three years of slave labour while being held prisoner by Japan during World War II.

This week, the 96-year-old is in Hawaii to participate in a dedication that honours about 400 Allied prisoners killed when a Japanese ship transporting them to Japan from the Philippines was sunk by US forces unaware they were on board.

The men are in 20 separate graves marked as "unknowns" in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, which is located inside an extinct volcanic crater also known as Punchbowl.

Today, Crowley will help dedicate a memorial stone for the prisoners at the cemetery in Honolulu.

"These are men from the United States Armed Forces who were ignominiously thrown in a pit without marking by the country, our country," Crowley said.

"It was a sad thing that they were never recognized before they were buried together in a mixed-up grave with no marker."
The conditions on the ships transporting prisoners to Japan were so horrific the Americans called them "hellships."