it’s worth reading the link:
> In response to the torpedo, the destroyers Take and Harukaze attacked and sank Shark. After dealing with the American submarine, the two destroyers returned to Arisan Maru to look for survivors. No POWs were killed by the torpedo strikes and nearly all were able to leave the ship's holds but the Japanese did not rescue any of the POWs that day, only Japanese.

Sounds like it was the Oryoku Maru: >Oryoku Maru was a 7,363-ton passenger cargo liner transporting 1,620 survivors of the Bataan Death March, Corregidor, and other battles, mostly American, packed in the holds, and 1,900 Japanese civilians and military personnel in the cabins. She left Manila on 13 December 1944, and over the next two days was bombed and strafed by U.S. airplanes. As she neared the naval base at Olongapo in Subic Bay, U.S. Navy planes from USS Hornet attacked the unmarked ship, causing it to sink on December 15. About 270 died aboard the ship. Some died from suffocation or dehydration. Others were killed in the attack, drowned or were shot while escaping the ship as it sank in Subic Bay, where the 'Hell Ship Memorial' is located.

>...On January 6, the smaller group of prisoners was transferred from Brazil Maru to Enoura Maru, and 37 British and Dutch were taken ashore. However, on January 9, Enoura Maru was bombed and disabled while in harbor, killing about 350 men. The survivors were put aboard Brazil Maru which arrived in Moji, Japan, on January 29, 1945. Only 550 of the over 900 who sailed from Taiwan were still alive; 150 more men died in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea in the following months, leaving only 403 survivors of the original 1,620 to be liberated from camps in Kyushu, Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan in August and September 1945.

That's what the quote in my original comment was about. Fucking horrific

from wikipedia:

The word maru (丸, meaning "circle") is often attached to Japanese ship names. The first ship known to follow this practice was the Nippon Maru, flagship of daimyō Toyotomi Hideyoshi's 16th century fleet.

Several theories purport to explain this practice:

• The most common is that ships were thought of as floating castles, and the word referred to the defensive "circles" or maru that protected the castle.
• The suffix -maru is often applied to words representing something beloved, and sailors applied this suffix to their ships.
• The term maru is used in divination and represents perfection or completeness, or the ship as "a small world of its own".
• The myth of Hakudo Maru, a celestial being that came to earth and taught humans how to build ships. It is said that the name maru is attached to a ship to secure celestial protection for itself as it travels.
• For the past few centuries, only non-warships bore the -maru ending. Its use was intended as a good hope naming convention that would allow a ship to leave port, travel the world, and return safely to home port: hence the complete circle or "round trip" arriving back at its origin unhurt.
• "Hinomaru", or "sun-disc", is a name often applied to the national flag of Japan.

Today many commercial and private ships are still named using this convention.

The Arisan Maru
On October 24, 1944, the Arisan Maru was transporting 1,781 U.S. and Allied military and civilian POWs when it was hit by a torpedo from a U.S. submarine (either USS Shark or USS Snook), at about 5:00 p.m.; it finally sank about 7:00 p.m. No POWs were killed by the torpedo strikes, and nearly all were able to escape from the ship's holds, but the Japanese did not attempt to rescue any of them from the sea. Only nine of the prisoners aboard survived the event. Five escaped and made their way to China in one of the ship's two life boats. They were reunited with U.S. forces and returned to the United States. The remaining four were later recaptured by Imperial Japanese naval vessels, with one of them dying shortly after they reached land.

Hell ships
> Many men lost their minds and crawled about in the absolute darkness armed with knives, attempting to kill people in order to drink their blood or armed with canteens filled with urine and swinging them in the dark. The hold was so crowded and everyone so interlocked with one another that the only movement possible was over the heads and bodies of others.

In May 1942, the Japanese began transferring its captured POWs by sea. Prisoners were often crammed into cargo holds with little air, ventilation, food, or water, for journeys that would last weeks. Many died due to asphyxia, starvation or dysentery. Some POWs became delirious and unresponsive in their environment of heat, humidity and lack of oxygen, food, and water. These transports carried a mixture of POWs and regular Japanese troops and cargo, and thus were not eligible to be marked as non-combatants. As a result, such vessels could be attacked by Allied submarines and aircraft, meaning they were at risk of being sunk before they even reached their destination. More than 20,000 Allied POWs died at sea when the transport ships carrying them were attacked by Allied submarines and aircraft.