IRON FROM SEA

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LXII, Issue 76, 23 September 1941, Page 6

IRON FROM SEA

JAPANESE LOOK FOR

WRECKED SHIPS

Cut off from its American supply of scrap iron, Japan has turned to ■the ocean to get this essential. munitions product, stated the Christian Science Monitor despatch from New York, reporting that Japanese salvage firms had begun operations to raise shipwrecks in waters un<t <3er Japanese control.

Listed as a possible source of 15,000 tons of metal is the 8,000,000 dollar American liner President Hoover, which grounded on Hoishito Island, near Formosa, on November 12, 1937. Japan already has taken about 7,000 tons from the wreck;

Salvagers expect to get 2,500 tons of metal from the Iwate Maru, which sank off the coast of Saghalien in January, 1938.

Also listed for salvage is the Russian liner Indigirka, 2,690 tons, which sank off Hokkaido with 700 fatalities during a storin^ in December, 1939.

A coral reef handed^ the Japanese a load of scrap iron in the wrecked liner Hofuku Maru, sunk, off Okinawa in a fog. For several years the ship was below water and' then one day a fisherman was surprised to see her mast and funnels above the surface. Divers said the (cotSl reef pushed the ship toward ,the surface as it grew and salvage was expected to be easy.