Capt. Frank Otto Brown: Adkins-Horton Family

1918 - 1944 (26 years)

Generation: 1

Capt. Frank Otto Brown was born in 1918 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga Co, OH; died on 24 Oct 1944 in Ship-Arisan Maru, North Pacific Ocean, At Sea; was buried on 24 Oct 1944 in Lost at Sea, North Pacific Ocean.

Notes:

Frank was Killed In Action with the sinking of a Japanese ship carrying American prisoners of war, sailing from Manila, Philippine Islands by submarine action on October 24, 1944.

Died:
The Arisan Maru was a Japanese freighter POW ship, one among many. It was sunk 24 October 1944 by an Allied forces torpedo. The two possible submarines which sank the Arisan Maru were the USS Shark or the USS Snook, with inadequate or conflicting information about which submarine was responsible. These two submarines were part of a wolf pack of allied submarines responsible for the many sinkings of the Japanese convoy MATA-30 heading for Takao. The USS Shark was sunk in Luzon Strait by Japanese destroyers on 24 October 1944. The last contact from the USS Snook was on 8 April 1945 in Luzon Strait.
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Japanese Freighter Arisan Maru POW Ship

Arisan Maru was a Japanese freighter and was one of Imperial Japan's "hell ships". The vessel, named for a mountain on Formosa, was initially used as a troop transport. The vessel was then used for the transportation of POWs from the Philippines to Manchuria, China or Japan. On October 24, 1944 the ship was torpedoed by an American submarine and sank. Of the 1,781 POWs aboard, all of them escaped the sinking ship but were not rescued by the Japanese. In the end, only nine of the prisoners survived the sinking.

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Allied Submarine USS Shark POW Ship
On 24th October, USS Seadragon received a message from the USS Shark stating that she had made radar contact with a single freighter, and she was going in to attack. This was the last message received from the submarine. She was reported as presumed lost on 27th November. Japanese records examined after the war indicate that on 24th October 1944, in Luzon Strait, Japanese destroyer Harukaze made contact with a submerged submarine and dropped depth charges. After losing and regaining the contact, the destroyer dropped another 17 depth charges which resulted in “bubbles, heavy oil, clothes and cork” coming to the surface.

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Allied Submarine USS Snook POW ShipUSS Shark
The USS Snook was lost on her 9th patrol in Luzon Strait. She was last heard of on 8th April, 1945, when she was reporting her position.

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