Opening Seas

Aboard the MV Montevideu Maru, a Japanese merchant ship, are over a thousand prisoners of war, mostly Australian soldiers and officers. They had been captured by the Japanese during the first months of battles that followed the start of Japanese expansion in Southeast Asia in late 1941 and early 1942.

Situated on a rocky island at the mouth of the Couesnon River, in the Bay of Saint-Michel, located between the French regions of Brittany and Normandy, a small abbey dedicated to the archangel Saint Michael (Saint-Michel) was built in the 10th century. Over the centuries, the abbey grew and became a fortress resembling a castle, surrounded by a wall and having its own village.

Montecristo is a small Italian island that gained considerable fame from the 19th century when it was associated with the character of the Count of Monte Cristo, a millionaire who buys a title of nobility, a well-traveled, multilingual man, with educated mannerisms, slightly petulant and snobbish, and a mysterious past, he is the protagonist of the homonymous work written by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870).