This is the reply I received.
"I'm missing maybe 5% of it and the original text is itself an uncertain message, but what I can get from it is saying that:
this man/men (no plural/singular indication) were transferred to either a malaysian POW camp or the 12th? (something teens) army on october 18th, showa 17 (1942) on a ship called 乾坤丸 (kenkon maru), and that his (unclear; subsequent situation of some kind?) is uncertain as they did not have documentation around it
the stamp at the top appears a repeat of the same date in the text (the year is unclear but close, date matches) which makes me think the uncertain aspect is going to be something like his health or family, since they wouldn't be looking up whether he died or where he was later transferred to
searching for the ship name finds this shipping company that claims to have been founded with a ship of the same name, though I don't know how unique it is
https://www.inui.co.jp/company/history.htmlalso found a research page dedicated to POW transports which lists it
http://www.powresearch.jp/jp/archive/ship/index.htmland this page has a ship's log which appears to be consistent with the document
http://www.tokusetsukansen.jpn.org/J/A407/AIC_0674.htm (though is clearly a different ship to inui's founding, as it set sail in 1935 vs being bought in 1904)
relevant section would be (year/month/day using traditional japanese calendar years)
17.10.19：singapore ～10.22 surabaya
17.10.24：surabaya ～11.05 rabaul
17.11.15：rabaul ～11.24 palau
17.11.29：palau ～12.05 gaoxiong (Taiwan)
so looks like three further places to look for records of him potentially being deboarded"
Regards, Pauline ( translation by Kate)
