There’s no evidence that Allan Morrison knew James Robb during their coinciding years on Stanford’s campus. Or that he ever connected his fellow alum with the name of the unlucky soul listed among more than 1,000 POWs to perish after boarding the Oryoku Maru on December 13, 1944.
But two years later, it would fall to Morrison, ’29, JD ’31, and two other prosecutors to bring justice to the perpetrators of the disaster. Of the 1,619 prisoners crammed into the hull of the “Hell Ship,” fewer than 450 were alive when after the Oryoku sank they finally reached Japan on January 29. The number soon eroded to 271 as ravaged bodies continued to succumb.
Morrison himself had come close to spending the war as a prisoner. He’d been working for the American consulate in Tianjin, China, when the Japanese attacked the city in 1937—and narrowly escaped, thanks to help from British diplomats, his daughter Shirley Loveless says.
He ultimately relocated to Hawaii, where he awoke on December 7, 1941, to the roar of attacking planes and the sight of billowing smoke from Pearl Harbor. He spent the war in the Army interisland transport service in Hawaii, according to his obituary.
After the war, Morrison became a civilian lawyer with the Army Judge Advocate General Corps, destined at first—according to family lore—for Germany. But her father had an incredible memory, Loveless says: He could recite Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar word for word, for example. The talent had helped him soak up numerous languages, and once his superiors learned he could speak Japanese, he was sent to Tokyo.
There he worked on the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and helped draft the Japanese constitution, in addition to prosecuting war criminals, Loveless says. Her father had mixed feelings about capital punishment, believing it best reserved for offenders of the highest ranks. Nevertheless, his prosecution in the Oryoku Maru case resulted in two executions by hanging.
Morrison’s tour of some of the most historic moments of the mid-20th century continued in 1948; he was on a mission to China when the Communists defeated the Nationalists in a decisive battle of the revolution. Later, working under the auspices of the United Nations, he defended POWs captured during the Korean War. He died in 1957 at age 51.
