Petty Officer First Class Taylor Lucas was nearly 80 feet underwater inside the Oryoku Maru wreck off Subic Bay when he found what looked like a boot from a prisoner of war. The sole and leather were still attached, and the boot later turned out to have “U.S. Army” written on it.
Defense Department researchers are trying to recover the remains of about 250 American prisoners of war who died in December 1944 when U.S. aircraft sank the Japanese ship carrying them. The wreck sits about 500 feet off the Philippine coast, and the work inside its flattened 436-foot frame has been described as among the most complex ever attempted by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
U.S. Navy divers in Subic Bay
Lucas dug through mud, wood and steel underwater before touching the boot remains. “I got that feeling of like, ‘Oh, maybe this is something important,’” he said after the find.
The Oryoku Maru was a Japanese liner used to transport captured American soldiers and sailors in World War II. That basic fact shapes the mission now: divers are not searching open water, but a wreck that has settled, collapsed and trapped material inside its hull.
Christopher Schurtz and Maj. Paul Schurtz
Christopher Schurtz said he cannot believe that after all this time, his grandfather’s remains might be coming home. “I can’t believe that after all this time, that this would be something that would even be possible,” he said.
He also said, “And I wish my dad was around to see it, cause it meant everything.” His father, Gerald, died in 2023 after growing up with the story of Maj. Paul Schurtz, who died on the Oryoku Maru at 43.
Paul Schurtz was a U.S. postal worker in Deming, N.M., and whistled while delivering mail. He also served as choir director at a local church before his National Guard coastal artillery unit was deployed to the Philippines in 1941, leaving behind Eleanor, 5-year-old Gerald, 1-year-old Robert and an unborn son.
The Oryoku Maru recovery work
The boot gives the divers a tangible clue inside a case that has lasted for decades, but researchers still face the problem of historical uncertainty. They cannot be certain who went down with the ship because of conflicting historical accounts, even as they continue excavating the wreck and looking for remains.
That uncertainty sits inside a wider accounting problem. About 80,000 U.S. servicemembers remain missing, most of them from World War II, and since 1973 fewer than 4,000 have been accounted for. The Oryoku Maru mission is one piece of that larger effort, and the next step is continued excavation inside the wreck rather than a finished identification.
Will the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency be able to recover and identify any of the remains from the Oryoku Maru wreck? For families like the Schurtz family, the answer now depends on what the divers can bring up from the mud, wood and steel still packed inside the ship.
