On August 11, 1944, the 258 men from the prison barge were marched to a nearby sports field and lectured by Admiral Wright who told them that troops fighting on Saipan desperately needed the ammunition they were supposed to be loading and that continued refusal to work would be treated as mutinous conduct, which carried the death penalty in times of war. Wright, who had seen nearly 400 of his men killed in 1942 in the Battle of Tassafaronga, said that although loading ammunition was risky, death by firing squad was the greater hazard.