SS De Klerk
SS De Klerk was a Dutch passenger-cargo liner owned by NV Koninklijke Paketvaart Mij Batavia.
Construction and history
Dutch service
SS De Klerk was constructed in early 1900 until December 1900 by Netherlandsche SB, in Amsterdam, where she was commissioned not long after.In 1928, She was renovated to hold 1,327 passengers aboard. De Klerk was converted to a troop carrier in December 1941. She was scuttled in port by the Royal Dutch Navy in Tanjong Priok, West Malaysia on 2 March 1942 to prevent capture by the [Imperial Imperial Japanese Army|Japanese Army|Japanese].
Japanese service
The Japanese found the ship and refloated De Klerk in 1942. They converted her into a Transport ship renamed Imaji Maru. She was navigating to Labuan, carrying 162 Japanese and 1,048 workers. 5 Japanese and 334 workers were lost in the quick sinking. Most of the victims might be by the explosion of torpedo or mine or bomb from an aircraft. The cause of the sinking is still unclear.In WWII, the Japanese forces captured lots of ships and also salvaged sunken vessels, and named a Japanese name, normally registered in the merchant fleet. All the ships were requisitioned by the state and most of them were operated by IAJ or INJ.
S/S Imaji Maru will be an underwater cultural heritage in 2044 under the Convention of the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, it’s natural to say that the history of the ship must be correct and out of the fiction.
It has been repeated the base fiction concerning this tragedy in Wikipedia and among insincere diving centers. There were not POWs on board, over 700 local workers were rescued. The wrong information must be excluded hereafter.