Manuel R. Carpenter was born May 22 1917, the son of Thomas Carpenter and Bertie Sanders. As the war approached, his father supported his family as a "ginner" at a local cotton gin while Manuel worked as a laborer at a bottling company. The family owned their home at 110 Alabama Street, valued at $1,000. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Manuel traveled to Pensacola and enlisted in the US Army Coast Artillery at Ft. Barrancas on January 31, 1941. He was assigned to Battery "A" (Anti-aircraft) of the 60th Coast Artillery Regiment.
At the beginning of the war, his regiment was deployed to Nichols Air Field near Manila, where it provided anti-aircraft and machine gun defenses against the Japanese invaders. They were soon withdrawn to Cabcaben on the Bataan Peninsula on December 27, 1941 and thence to Ft. Mills on Corregidor. There the regiment fought valiantly until their surrender to Japanese forces on May 6, 1942. Imprisoned in Manila where he was beaten and starved, Carpenter was finally selected for transport to Japan in early October 1944. His POW detachment boarded the "Hell Ship" Arisan Maru on October 11, 1944.
The ship sailed ten days later as part of a convoy with accompanying destroyers. While sailing through the Bashi Strait on October 24, 1944, the ship was hit amidships by two American torpedoes fired by the USS Shark. The POW's were forced into the ship's holds and the hatch openings covered. Knowing the POW's would drown, the Japanese abandoned the ship leaving the trapped men to their fate. However, the resourceful Americans found a way out and jumped overboard. Most survived the initial attack. Those who could not swim raided the food lockers, wanting to die with full stomachs.
As the ship sank, the remaining POWs took to the water on anything that floated. Some swam to nearby Japanese ships, but were pushed away by Japanese sailors with poles. Five men found an abandoned lifeboat during the night as they heard their comrade's crying for help in the dark. The pitiful pleas soon faded away until there was silence. Of the 1,800 Americans on board, only nine men survived the sinking. Eight survived to the end of the war. Even more sad was the news that the USS Shark had been depth charged and sunk with all 87 men that same day by the Japanese destroyers. Corporal Carpenter's body was never recovered and nothing remains of the brave soldier, but a memorial marker in the Crain Cemetery in Milton, Florida.
The Japanese "Hell Ship" Arisan Maru, unknowingly
sunk by the USS Shark with 1,800 American POW's
aboard on October 24, 1944
USS Shark sunk shortly after torpedoing the Arisan Maru with all hands lost
Missing in the South China Sea, Cpl. Manuel R. Carpenter
has only a memorial in the Crain Cemetery, Milton, Florida