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SANDAKAN DEATH MARCH
( 1945 )
Sandakan, the prison compound in British North Borneo holding 2,434 Australian and British POWs. Captured when Singapore fell, they were transported in a decrepit tramp steamer, the Yubi Maru, to Sandakan to help build a military airstrip for the Japanese. When their labour was no longer required, they were confined to the prison compound where they slowly died from starvation, disease and brutalities. As the Allies approached the islands, over 1,000 prisoners, still alive, were force marched in groups of 50 to another camp in the jungle at Ranau, about 120 miles away. The 291 prisoners, including 288 stretcher cases, who were too sick to march, and left behind at Sandakan, were massacred soon after, many dying after undergoing diabolical torture. In June, 1945, of the 455 prisoners that left Sandakan for Ranau on the first march, only 140 reached Ranau alive, the remainder had died or were shot during the march. Prisoners were shot out of hand, their bodies littering the route. On the second inhumane death march, 536 POWs left Sandakan but only 189 were still alive when they reached their destination, 142 of these were Australians. The third march consisted of 75 prisoners, mostly British, all of whom died. During their short stay at Ranau, six Australians managed to escape, the rest were either shot or died from exhaustion, or illnesses such as malaria, beriberi, and dysentery. Of the six escapees, three died later and only three from the original 2,434 were alive to bear witness at the War Crimes Trials which followed at Rabaul and Tokyo in 1946 in which fourteen Japanese officers, convicted of war crimes in Borneo, were executed. Captain Hoshijima Susumu, the Sandakan prison commandant was found guilty and hanged at Rabaul on April 6, 1946. Altogether, 1,381 Australian prisoners-of-war died at Sandakan in the most heinous atrocity of the Japanese against Australian troops in the entire Pacific war. Of the British prisoners, 641 had died. The 4,000 imported Javanese slave labourers who worked on the airstrip, less than half a dozen were alive at wars end yet their fate is hardly mentioned in history books. Only 25 Australians escaped from Japanese prison camps to come home again to their homeland. These escapes were from Borneo and Ambon. Around the same number escaped but were recaptured and executed. The number of deaths during the Sandakan marches were four times greater than the Americans who died during the Bataan marches.
Today, the Sandakan War Memorial Park, with its two Australian memorials, is beautifully laid out on the former site of the notorious prison camp.
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OPERATION KINGFISHER
The code name for the rescue operation planned to liberate the Australian and British prisoners of war confined at Sandakan. In the planning stage for months under the direction of Australian General Sir Thomas Blamey and the Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) the operation was bungled from the start owing to ineptitude, incompetence, petty jealousies and lack of decision making. The egosticistical US General Douglas MacArthur (not very popular in Australia) nevertheless gave it his unqualified support, but history has wrongly blamed MacArthur who became the scapegoat for Kingfisher's failure. Blamey stated that aircraft and ships were not available for the rescue operation, that MacArthur needed them for 'other purposes' (no doubt, the proposed invasion of Japan). After thirty years the Kingfisher files were released for public access. They show that the RAAF had a pool of around 40 C-47s in hand and that only 30 were needed for the paratroop assault for which 800 paratroops had trained in the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland (although they were never told for what purpose). After months of planning, the rescue operation never took place and so 2,428 Australian and British POWs...died.
When the war ended, 14,526 Australian POWs were liberated from Japanese prison camps.
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THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH
( April 1942 )
On April 9, 1942, US Major General Edward P. King, commander of the Bataan Garrison on Luzon, formally surrendered his troops to the Japanese invaders commanded by General Homma. After four hard months of combat, the troops were now exhausted, low on ammunition, low on food (most of their meat ration coming from horses, mules, carabao and water buffalo) and many suffering from malaria, dysentery and other diseases. The American and Filipino defenders of Bataan were now in no condition to continue the struggle. It was near the town of Mariveles in the southern tip of the Bataan Peninsula that the infamous Bataan Death March began on April 10, 1942. Each morning, in groups of several hundred, the prisoners were herded on to the main road that led north to Camp O'Donnell their first prison camp. Hungry and thirsty, sick and tired, it was every man for himself, few helped one another. If anyone fell behind he was shot, bayoneted or beheaded and their bodies left in full view of the following column. Between Mariveles and Cabcaben the column of prisoners was shelled by their own guns on Corregidor. A few days and 100 kilometres further on, the first column arrived at San Fernando where they were forced into railroad boxcars. Packed like sardines, suffocating in the summer heat, and those suffering from dysentery defecating on each other, many died 'standing up'. Four hours later they detrained at Capas and were forced to march the remaining ten kilometres to Camp O'Donnell. Around 9,300 Americans survived the Death March, between 600 and 650 died or were killed on the way. The Filipino prisoners, numbering around 45,000 arrived at the camp after completing the March, about five thousand had lost their lives during the March. The first forty days at Camp O'Donnell saw the deaths of around 1,500 more Americans and by the end of July at least another 20,000 Filipinos died. On June 6, 1942, the Filipino prisoners were granted complete amnesty and released. The extremely high death rate, the highest of any POW camp anywhere, compelled the Japanese to move most of the prisoners to another camp at Cabanatuan , north of O'Donnell. It was at Cabanatuan that the Death March survivors met up with their fellow countrymen captured on Corregidor and who fortunately did not participate in the March but had suffered the humiliation of being marched through the main streets of Manila in front of thousands of Filipinos who had been ordered out to watch the procession. After the fighting on Corregidor, some American POWs were forced to do a most distasteful duty. Divided into work parties they were ordered to cut the right hand off every Japanese soldier found dead. Some bodies had been lying in the hot sun for days. The dead bodies were then burned and the hands cremated, the ashes placed in small urns to be returned to their families in Japan.
The striking memorial, built on the site of the Cabanatuan Prisoner of War Camp on Luzon, includes a Wall of Honour on which are inscribed the names of around 3,000 Americans, mostly survivors of the Death March, who died at Cabanatuan.
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