Arisan Maru was a 6,886 GRT Type 2A freighter constructed in 1944 during World War II and was one of Imperial Japan's hell ships. The vessel, named for a mountain on Taiwan, was initially used as a troop transport. The vessel was then turned over for use for the transportation of prisoners of war (POWs) from the Philippines to Manchuria, China or Japan. On October 24, 1944, the ship was torpedoed by an American submarine and sank. Of the 1,781 POWs aboard, all of them escaped the sinking ship but were not rescued by the Japanese. In the end, only nine of the prisoners survived the sinking.

A hell ship is a ship with extremely inhumane living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army to transport Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and rōmusha out of the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong and Singapore in World War II. These POWs were taken to the Japanese Islands, Formosa, Manchukuo, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma, or Siam to be used as forced labor.