Tokei Maru

Contemporary reports

The New York Times reported on 18 September 1922 that six steamers had been at Smyrna on the preceding Thursday: one American, one Japanese, two French and two Italian. The American and Japanese ships took refugees aboard without checking their papers, while the others accepted foreign subjects with passports.

On 18 September, American consul-general George Horton sent a dispatch from Athens to the United States secretary of state, reporting that a Japanese ship had taken refugees away and that the passengers praised its officers and crew. Horton also wrote that he had heard of cargo being thrown overboard to make room for them. The Indianapolis News later reproduced the dispatch. On 15 October the Atlanta Constitution published a letter by John S. Owens Jr. written to his parents, which described refugees disembarking at Piraeus and wrote how they said that a Japanese cargo vessel was dumping cargo and taking them in.

On 3 December 1922, the Boston Daily Globe published an account attributed to Anna Harlowe Birge, whose husband was a professor at Smyrna's International College. Birge described people crowding the waterfront and swimming in the harbour. She stated that a Japanese freighter threw its valuable cargo of silk, lace and china overboard and carried several hundred refugees to Piraeus. The English-language Japan Times and Mail had also praised a Japanese merchant ship and its treatment of refugees in an October report.

The Greek press identified the ship as Tokei Maru. According to the newspaper Empros, its captain defied Turkish officers who threatened the evacuation and declared that an attack on the refugees would be an insult to the Japanese flag:

It is worthwhile to refer to a philanthropic event as well as the brave conduct of a captain from a Japanese ship, the Tokei Maru. He was successful in helping 825 Greek refugees, despite the threat of the Turks. When the Japanese captain, pained by the terrible slaughter of the inhabitants and the petitions from Greek refugees, sent out all the lifeboats the ship had in order to take on board as many refugees as possible, officers of Kemalʼs military forces surrounded the boats and threatened to sink them. Then the Japanese captain immediately declared in person to the Kemalist officers that if they touched even a hair of the refugees, he would regard this act as an insult against the Japanese flag, a threat against the Japanese government, and he would request an immediate apology from the Kemalist government. Facing these warnings, the Turks consulted their superior officer and were obliged to let those refugees who had got on the boats leave freely.

Athinai called the captain "Mr Lou". An Empros editorial also called on Greeks to recognize Japan's assistance alongside that of the major powers. Advertisements from the period offered passenger and cargo transport aboard Tokei Maru from Piraeus to Alexandria via Chania and Heraklion.

Voyages and passenger numbers

The number of refugees carried by the ship remains disputed. Some sources report the rescue of 325 people, while others give a figure of 825 or even 1,600. Historian Nanako Murata Sawayanagi states that the number rescued cannot be established with certainty.

Survivor and family recollections

In his 1960 memoir The Story of a Young Life, Armenian survivor Byuzand Jambazian described reaching the waterfront and seeing bodies in the sea. He recalled that a Japanese ship was the first to take people aboard. Alis Torean's 1975 memoir My Childhood without Spring recounts a Japanese commander's protest against other Allied commanders' refusal to help.

In his memoirs, published in 1989, the musician Ruben Karakhanyan described meeting a Japanese captain in Tokyo in the 1930s. The captain was introduced to him as having rescued Christians at Smyrna and said that he had thrown cargo overboard to take them aboard.

In his 2006 book My Detroit, Dan Georgakas describes how his mother escaped from Asia Minor with her younger brother aboard a Japanese ship. She remembered a sailor helping her aboard and being given rice.

The introduction to Constantine Buller's Operation Dolby identifies Constantine and Marika Georgiades as refugees who travelled from Constantinople to Smyrna and boarded a Japanese ship. According to their family account, the captain ordered cargo thrown overboard and rescued people from the water before sailing to Thessaloniki.

Journalist Katerina Rovva also reported a recollection by Lydia Karagianis of Laconia, New Hampshire, preserved in publications held by Estia Neas Smyrnis. Relating her mother's experience as a young girl during the catastrophe, Karagianis described a Japanese ship intervening to save lives despite the restrictions imposed on other vessels. An account by Phyllis Sembos, published in The National Herald in 2018, described her grandmother and great-aunts being rescued by a Japanese ship.

In a 2019 interview with Mainichi Shimbun, Yannis Itos of Thessaloniki recalled his grandfather's account of being rescued by a Japanese ship. His grandfather, a 33-year-old cook working in Smyrna, had fled to the harbour during the fire. He remembered the crew eating rice with bowls and chopsticks. According to Itos, when refugees without identification were initially refused permission to disembark at Piraeus, the captain appealed to the authorities to admit them.

Organist Berj Jamgochian recalled that his father, Nazareth, had been rescued by a Japanese ship. Vardanyan and Martoyan obtained a recording of his speech from the Miho Museum in Japan and reproduced his account. They associate the rescue with Tokei Maru.

A 2022 digital oral-history project recorded an interview with Telemachos Aplakis of Kavala about his grandmother, Eleni Aplaki. According to her grandson, she had fled Samsun and reached Smyrna, where she saw a Japanese ship taking Greeks and Armenians aboard while throwing merchandise overboard.