Tragedy of Truk Lagoon - La tragédie du lagon de Truk

- Diving to nearly 300 feet, Cousteau divers enter the underwater graveyard of a Japanese freighter, sunk during World War II. Disoriented by the effects of depth and the hallucinatory darkness, they move through the remains of human life: rusted metal beds, the sole of a shoe and the skeletons of some 50 sailors. The sight is a mute testimony to the senselessness of war, and a reminder of the lives lost on the SS Thistlegorm that Calypsos crew found in the Red Sea, on the other side of the world, the other side of the War.

- A près de 90 m de profondeur, les plongeurs Cousteau pénètrent dans le cimetière sous-marin du cargo japonais qui a sombré pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Désorientés par les effets de la profondeur et les hallucinations dues à l'obscurité, ils évoluent dans des vestiges de vie humaine : des lits métalliques rouillés, une semelle de chaussure et les squelettes d'une cinquantaine de marins. Ces images sont un témoignage muet du caractère impitoyable de la guerre et rappelle les vies perdues sur le SS Thistlegorm, que l'équipage de la Calypso avait retrouvé dans la mer Rouge, de l'autre côté du monde.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• cousteau
• calypso
• lagon
• lagoon
• thistlegorn
• épave
• shipwreck

[machinegun0478714950]

@cujomojo2007 so if you go their can you than still find the human remains today??or have they been removed??

[cujomojo2007]

@cousteaucontent Check your description?... This is the SS Thistlegorm, not a Japanese freighter. She went down in the Red Sea, nowhere near Truk Lagoon. She's only 100 feet down, not 300 feet. You'll be lucky to find 50 skeletons, as only 9 members of the crew went down with her.

[cujomojo2007]

@Rogentx This is the wreck of SS Thistlegorm, it's not a Japanese ship. It was a British Merchant Navy ship, she was sunk in the Red Sea in 1941 by a German bomber from Crete. As a Merchant Navy ship I'm not sure how the war graves commission view her, but there were 9 Royal Navy sailors on board at the time she went down. If any of those men went down with her I think it should be considered a War Grave, and left alone. Sadly the Thistlegorm is a popular dive.

[oldfart387]

Makes me proud that we dropped the bombs.

[Rogentx]

I think regardless of how vicious and brutal the japanese were during the war, it is still always good to respect sunken ships because they were sailors just like our boys. I don't consider picking up a skull as disrespectful at all. Now, if someone removed the skull completely, which I have no doubt people have done, that is defininetly disrespectful. Wargrave is excatly that, war grave no matter what nationality it is.

[hoffbill]

@ManateeAlley

Read some books, instead of watching John Wayne movies, my friend.

The University of Hawaii has some great books on these islands during WW2.

You will be amazed!

It's time we attack the supply lines of US agressor murdering colonists in Hawaii and Guam, who enslaved and murdered the free natives and their cultures and tradition for far too long, don't you agree?

[ManateeAlley]

What tragedy? These Japanese agressors murdered, pillaged and raped their way across the Pacific enslaving untold numbers of free peoples and murdering even more. The attack on their re-supply ships of armaments and reinforcements helped defeat this tyrannical regime FOREVER....the only tragedy is that it didn't happen SOONER!