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Book Review
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| In 1945, there were 2428 POWs in
the camp at Sandakan on the west coast of Sabah: from January of that year,
1047 were sent across |
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| country through savage, steep jungle
terrain on three death marches. The local villagers, thinking the route
would be used to move Japanese troops, had cut the track through the most
inhospitable terrain they knew. |
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| The prisoners, who had built a military
airstrip at Sandakan, were ordered to march to Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu)
on the east coast for new forced labour projects. They never made it. Those
who survived the marches were halted at the halfway point, at Ranau, because
Jesselton had come under Allied attack. All but six would perish, either
on the marches or once they |
| reached Ranau. Lynette Ramsay Silver
(right),
a writer who has researched the death marches for 14 years and has written
a book |
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| called - "A Conspiracy of Silence",
said the rescue never came because of a major intelligence failure. |
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| The official version, she said, was
a plan to rescue the prisoners; Operation Kingfisher was shelved because
General MacArthur, |
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| Supreme Allied Commander of the south-west
Pacific during World War II, refused to supply the necessary aircraft.
However, the records show the Allies received a signal from inside Borneo
from a Special Operations team sent on April 2, 1945, that said: "We have
reliable information that all the prisoners have been removed. |
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Aerial View of the Sandakan
P.O.W. Camp
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| We expect confirmation within a fortnight."
On April 16: "We now confirm no prisoners in Sandakan. Recommend bombing."
At the time, 900 prisoners remained at the camp |
| none survived. "The government didn't
know it was wrong until death march escapee Braithwaite (right)
was picked up on June 12, 1945. |
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| That was the first indication there
were still prisoners in Sandakan," Silver said. Perhaps, because so few
survived, Sandakan is not a name that rides high in Australian war history.
Sitting recently at a simple memorial in Ranau at the end of the march,
Bombadier Kenneth Tunney said he had heard many stories of Australian heroism
as he trained to be a soldier. "I heard stories of Kokoda, Gallipoli, El
Alamein, Vietnam, Somalia but not Sandakan. I didn't have a concept of
the scale of it, because there were so few survivors," he said. The Australian
War Memorial did not present its first Sandakan exhibition until 1995 and
the public response was so overwhelming it was later incorporated into
the permanent exhibit. |
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The burnt remains of the Sandakan
P.O.W. Camp 1946
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