This photograph depicts a group of ex-prisoners of war aboard the Maunganui, which was a New Zealand oil burner that was converted into a hospital ship in 1941. It was staffed by 104 medical officers, nursing sisters, and orderlies. After the war it joined up with the American Task Force 111 to bring patients from Hong Kong and Formosa back to New Zealand, and continued to repatriate POWs and civilians from Hong Kong, Formosa, and Manila to New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Many of the patients who embarked in Formosa were British POWs who had been taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore.
