Sandakan Death Marches

October 24, 1945. Sandakan POW camp. A few months after it was vacated and demolished by retreating Japanese troops, little remains of the burnt-out camp. In an area of No. 1 compound (pictured) graves containing the bodies of 300 Australian and British prisoners were discovered. They are believed to have been the men left in the camp after the second series of marches to Ranau. Each grave contained several bodies, in some cases as many as 10. (Photographer: Frank Burke.)

The Sandakan Death Marches are the most infamous incident in series of events which resulted in the deaths of more than 6,000 Indonesian civilian slave labourers and Allied prisoners of war, held by the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II, at prison camps in North Borneo. Of all the prisoners held at the camps at the time of the marches, only about 5978 survived the war.

In 1942, Indonesian civilians, imported from Java, along with Australian and British POWs, who had been captured at the fall of Singapore, were shipped to North Borneo, to build a military airstrip at Sandakan. As on the Burma Railway, the prisoners were worked hard at gunpoint, were often beaten and received little food or medical treatment. They were held in the area once construction was completed. Most had died as a result of their treatment by early 1945. When Allied landings in the area appeared increasingly likely, the camp commandant, Captain Susumi Hoshijima decided to move the remaining prisoners inland to Ranau, a distance of approximately 250 kilometres (160 miles).

The first marches

A first phase of marches — through swamps, jungle and mountainous areas — occurred between January and March, 1945. In several groups, 455 POWs, all of whom were malnourished and/or suffering serious illness, started the journey. Although the route took nine days, they were given and made to carry four days' rations. As on the Bataan Death March, POWs who were not fit enough to complete the journey were either killed or left to die en route. The worst was yet to come for the roughly 140 men who completed the journey. In the words of one historian: "Those who survived to reach Ranau were herded into insanitary and crowded huts and many died from dysentery. By 26 June, only five Australians and one British soldier were still alive."

The second marches

Meanwhile, at the Sandakan camp, some 885 POWs died of hunger and illness between February and May. A second wave of forced marches to Ranau began on May 29, when the camp was closed and destroyed by the Japanese . A group of 536 POWs were sent towards Ranau; almost 300 prisoners who were not well enough to move were either killed, or left to die in the ruins of the Sandakan camp. The marchers were even less fit than those in the first phase, were provided with fewer rations and were forced to forage for food along the way. Only 183 POWs remained when the group reached Ranau on 27 June.

October 26, 1945 Sergeant Hosotani Naoji (left, seated) of the Kempeitai (Japanese secret police), at Sandakan is interrogated by Squadron Leader F. G. Birchall (second right), Missing Servicemen Section, Royal Australian Air Force, and Sergeant Mamo (right), a member of the U.S. Army/Allied Translator and Interpreter Service. Naoji confessed to shooting two Australian POWs and five ethnic Chinese civilians. (Photographer: Frank Burke.)

Aftermath

By the end of July, when four prisoners escaped, the last to do so, there were only 40 POWs still alive at Ranau and none of these 40 survived the war. They were killed by the guards in August, possibly up to 12 days after the war ended on August 14.

Of the six Allied survivors, all of whom were Australian soldiers, only three survived the lingering effects of their ordeal to give evidence at war crimes trials in Tokyo and Rabaul. Hokijima was found guilty and hanged on April 6, 1946.

It is believed that almost 4,000 Indonesians, 1,381 Australians, and 641 British prisoners died at, or between, Sandakan and Ranau.

The Sandakan Death Marches have been dramatised in the 2004 play Sandakan Threnody — a threnody being a hymn of mourning, composed as a memorial to a dead person. The play was written by Australian composer Jonathan Mills, whose father survived a term of imprisonment at Sandakan, in 1942-43.

See also

• Tatsuji Suga
• Batu Lintang camp
• Borneo campaign, 1945

Footnotes

External links

• The Sandakan Memorial Foundation
• Laden, Fevered, Starved: Remembering Sandakan
• Stolen Years Australian War Memorial. Australian Prisoners of War-Prisoners of the Japanese
• Australian Prisoners of War of the Japanese Reading List
• Sandakan
• Behind the Wire Australia's War: 1939-1945
• History of the War Memorial Park next to Sibuga FR Sabah Forestry Department
• Commemorating the Sandakan Death March ABC Western Australia Monday, 13 June 2005
• Lest We Forget Sandakan-Ranau Death March
• Sandakan Death March: Japanese Inhumanity Digger History: Unofficial history of the Australian & New Zealand Armed Services
• What happaned on the Sandakan Death March?ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee (Qld)
• The Sandakan Death March Pacific War Historical Society
• Defense Exhibits Japanese War Crime Trbunal Documents 1946-1948
• Inventory of the Japanese War Crime Tribunal Documents, 1946-1948 The University of New Mexico, University Libraries, Center for Southwest Research.Box 18, Folder 73:No. 1671A. Oct. 26, 1945. War Crimes. Sandakan Area. Joint Statement by Chen Kay, Chin Kin, and Lo Tong against Sgt. Naoji Rosotani, Kempei Tai. Box 20, Folder 57: No. 3211. IMTFE, sworn deposition of Takakura, Tadashi, 9-8-47. Captain Takakura Tadashi was the commander of the Sandakan Camp when the POWs were marched from Sandakan to Ranau, on the Second Death March, 29 May 1945
• Tourism and the Sandakan Death Marches