Could not connect to SMTP host: email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com, port: 465, response: -1

With amazon SES, configuration needs to be as follows:

<prop key="mail.smtp.auth">true</prop>    
<prop key="mail.smtp.ssl.enable">true</prop>

instead of:

<prop key="mail.smtp.auth">true</prop>
<prop key="mail.smtp.starttls.enable">true</prop> 

as hinted by dave.

EDIT: Please use this solution: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8928559/536299

Amazon SES SMTP requires the SSL before the SMTP session. The StartTLS command is not supported by SES.

These settings worked for me:

mail.transport.protocol=smtp
mail.smtp.port=25
mail.smtp.auth=true
mail.smtp.starttls.enable=true
mail.smtp.starttls.required=true
mail.smtp.host=email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com
mail.smtp.user=[SMTP username]
mail.smtp.password=[SMTP user password]

If you try to connect to connect using SSL connection, it rejected the connection. So you need to do STARTTLS after connection.

You can add mail.debug=true to see where it failed.

The sender email address must be a verified email address otherwise SES refuses to forward the email.