Almost from the moment that I stepped out of my taxi and walked through the gates, the skies opened and it rained heavily as it does in the tropics. There was not much I could do pother than to retreat under my umbrella and in the few breaks, poke my camera out for a photo.
The rain did not dampen the almost palatable feeling of anguish that settled like an invisible mist in the hollows of this park and for me, to stand in a place of such tragedy and walk the same slopes trodden by those brave soles some seventy years ago was one that was of great significance.
My father was stationed here at the end of the Second World War and although he spoke very sparingly of his experiences, I do remember the impression of squalor and degradation that his comments left on a much younger me.
Rather than use my own inadequate words to tell the story of this place, I instead refer to the following text which is from information gathered at the Memorial Park during my visit and which will I think, impart something of those same feelings I experienced here.
SANDAKAN MEMORIAL PARK
During late 1941 and early 1942 Japanese Forces swept south in a series of victories that brought the Second World War to South-east Asia and the Pacific. Many Allied service personnel became prisoners of war. In July 1942 nearly 1500 Australian POW’s were shipped from Singapore to Sandakan and forced to build a military airfield at the command of the Japanese. In 1943 over 770 British POW’s arrived, followed by a further 500 Australians. All of these prisoners were housed here at the Sandakan POW Camp.
In June 1943 there were about 2500 prisoners at Sandakan. In January 1945 thre first of three “DEath Marches” took place when prisoners were force-marched 260 kilometres to Ranau. The Marches claimed large numbers of POW lives. At the end of the war only 6 were still alive and they survived because they escaped.
The Returned & Services League of Australia began the task of preserving thje site and this park has now been developed by the Australian Government with the co-operation of the Government of Sabah as a memorial to those who suffered and died here, on the Death Marches and at Ranau.
The pathway will take you up to a commemorative pavilion and memmoril, and then back along the road the prisoners of war took as they set out on the Death Marches.
CAPTURE BY THE JAPANESE
In late 1941, a decade after the expansionist war in China, Japan attacked various targets in the Pacific and South-east Asia. Its aim was to secure vital raw materials. Mounting a surprise attack on Malaya, the Japanese almost simultaneously a range of western centres of influence in Asia and the Pacific.
In a sweeping series of rapid victories, Japanese forces soon took Malaya, Singapore, Burma, the Phillipines, the Netherlands East Indies and other islands. The surrender of Singapore on 15 February 1942 was disastrous for Britain, Australia and other Allies.
More tan 132,000 Allied troops, and 180,000 Asian troops who fought with the Allies, were captured. Included among the Allied troops were 50,000 British and 20,000 Australians. Two-thirds of the total were taken at the fall of Singapore following defeat in the Malayan campaign. Singapore Island’s Changi Camp held the largest number of Australian prisoners of War and very great numbers of British. From here groups of POW’s were sent to various military construction projects at the direction of the Japanese. POW’s worked on the Burma-Thailand railway, on a railway in Sumatra and on airfields in Burma, French Indo-China and in north Borneo. They were shipped to Japan as industrial labourers, many dying when their transports were torpedoed by Allied submarines. POW’s were also sent to Korea, Taiwan (Formosa) and Manchuria.
Almost universally, the POW’s under the Japanese experienced privation, hard labour, brutality, appalling living conditions and death. British, Australian, American, Indian and Dutch POW’s were bashed by their guards, suffered from starvation and resultant killer diseases and sometimes- especially in the case of Chinese POW’s – were murdered in large numbers. Asian labourrers working for the Japanese suffered particularly cruelly.
By the end of the war in 1945, over 8000 – more than a third – of Australian prisoners of the Japanese were dead. This represented nearly half of the total deaths of Australians in the Pacific war. Of the 8000 dead, nearly one quarter died in Sandakan, on the Death Marches, or at Ranau.
ONLY SIX SURVIVED
Of the 2500 POW’s who were at Sandakan in late 1943, only 6 – al Australian- returned home. Despite enormous odds and the fact that all were ill and underweight, two men managed to escape from the second March, and four from Ranau.
On 7 June 1945 gunner O.C. Campbell escaped from the March with four companions. For a long period they struggled through the jungle. One companion suicided, two were shot by a Japanese and one died in the scrub. Helped by local people, Campbell reached a Services Recconaissance Department officer. He was evacuated by seaplane from the mouth of the Bongaya River on 24 July.
Shortly after Campbell, Bdr. J.R. Braithwaite escaped from the March on his won. He too forced his way through the jungle and alonmg waterways and with the help of locals reached Libaran Island where he was picked up by a US PT boat- on his 28th birthday.
On 7 July Privates K, Botterill and N.A.E. Short, L/Bdr. W.D. Moxham and Gnr F.D. Anderson escaped from Ranau. Trying to reach Jesselton, they spent six weeks in the jungle not far from Ranau. Anderson died in late JUly. ON 28 July WO1 W.H. Sticpewich and Pte H. Reither escaped from Ranau. They, like the others, were helped by villagers. Reither died on 8 August, shortly before Sticpewich was met by local agents working for the SRD men. A few weeks later the SRD guerrillas made contact with Botterill, Moxham and Short. BOtterill turned 21 while in the jungle. In September Stiepewich, Botterill, Moxham and Short were flown to Labuan.
THE POW CAMP
The camp was reached via the turn off 8 miles (13 kilometres) from Sandakan. Consequently the camp was often called the 8 Mile Camp. It was located next to what in pre-war years had been a British Agriculture Experiment Station. Ironically, huts built by the British administration pre-war were subsequently used to house internees – including Japanese. THese huts were the nucleus of the POW camp.
The British-built huts were timber and in order to house all the POW’s the Japanese had extra huts made from atap (a form of thatching common in south-east Asia). Officers initially occupied the timber huts and other ranks lived in the atap huts.The huts were very crowded and men only had a space about half a metre wide each on the raised sleeping platforms. Rats and lice thrived in the huts and the roofs leaked. B Force occupied No. 1 compound, the British occupied No.2 (after a few months housed near the airstrip) and E. Force occupied No. 3 though late in 1943 the E. Force POW’s moved into No1 compound. The accompanying map drawn for the war crimes trial by one of the survivors, Warrant Officer Bill Sticpewich, indicates the function of different buildings. Note how many buildings were used as hospitals in the latter part vof the war.
