Only 6 of about 2,500 Australian and British prisoners interned at Sandakan in north-eastern Borneo survived the war. Many died from illness and disease. Others were beaten and tortured to death. Still more died along the Sandakan 'death march', the greatest tragedy to afflict Australian prisoners of the Japanese.
Arrival in Borneo
I became aware it was a one-way trip when we started to hear shots, and you felt that there was no hope for anyone that fell out.
[Dick Braithwaite in Hank Nelson, Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, Sydney, ABC, 1985, 109]
The first Australians to arrive in Borneo were B Force. The group of nearly 1,500 men sailed from Singapore on 8 July 1942 in a so-called 'hell ship', the Ubi Maru.
After setting up camp at Sandakan, the prisoners began to build an airstrip.
At first, conditions and food supplies were reasonable. But from September 1942, Japanese control began to tighten. This also happened elsewhere in Asia, including at Changi in Singapore.
Prisoners were made to sign a promise not to escape. Senior officers were moved to Kuching in western Borneo.
Intelligence group
Shortly after arriving at Sandakan, the prisoners took the risk of creating a secret intelligence organisation. They contacted:
- an Australian doctor in charge of a local government hospital
- members of the local constabulary
- local Chinese and civilian internees on the nearby Berhala Island.
Through these networks, the prisoners:
- got medicines
- got maps of the local area
- found materials to create a radio transmitter
- developed plans for an uprising in the event of an Allied landing.
Thanks to the close proximity of the Philippines, the POWs also communicated with American and local guerrilla organisations.
In July 1943, the underground intelligence movement was betrayed.
In the following months, Japanese police, the Kempeitai, interrogated and tortured 22 Australians, 5 Europeans and around 50 local people. Some were imprisoned at Changi in Singapore.
In March 1944, the Japanese executed 6 Asians and one Australian, Captain Lionel Matthews.
Attempted escapes
The prisoners made 4 escape attempts. Only one was successful.
Eight men who escaped joined the guerilla forces on nearby Tawi-Tawi. Two of these men would die fighting later in the war. Six eventually made it back to Australia.
Worsening conditions
In late March 1943, a second group of Australian and British prisoners, E Force, arrived in Kuching. The Japanese sent 500 Australians to Berhala Island and then, in June, to Sandakan.
From mid-1943, conditions at Sandakan deteriorated. This was partly due to the arrival of brutal Formosan guards.
A small cage was built within the camp to punish prisoners for trivial offences. Some men were confined for as long as a month. They couldn't stand up in the cage and received little food.
The treatment of the remaining prisoners deteriorated further in 1944. Brutal beatings and torture were common. Food supplies were shrinking.
By September 1944, 120 Australian and 90 British prisoners had died. Allied bombings of Borneo in September 1944 and April 1945 killed another 33 prisoners.
Forced marches to Ranau
In January 1945, the Japanese began to fear an Allied invasion of Borneo, which did happen in May. They began to move the prisoners to Ranau, a small mountain village 255 km inland.
The first group of 470 prisoners, including 350 Australians. left in batches of 50. All of them were already weak with beri-beri, a disease caused by a vitamin B-1 deficiency, and malnutrition. Most of the men had no boots. As one of the few survivors recalled.
We'd be marching all night till about 3 o'clock in the morning or something, then when [the Japanese] wanted a rest, they rested. When the time came to go on again, after three or four hours' rest, the men couldn't get to their feet. … The ones that couldn't get up, they were all put together. We went on for a distance, and all we heard from the rattle of a tommy gun … It was a killing off party.
[Nelson Short in in Hank Nelson, Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, Sydney, ABC, 1985, 108.]
A second forced march was ordered in May when the Allies landed at Tarakan Island. The camp at Sandakan was then destroyed. About 290 of the weakest of the prisoners were left behind without accommodation or medical care. According to the accounts of Japanese guards, they slowly died or were shot in the weeks that followed.
The prisoners on the forced march had to negotiate steep mountain tracks. They were crawling and sliding through knee-deep mud. The Japanese shot anyone who collapsed in exhaustion. Only 142 Australians and 61 British prisoners finally reached Ranau in late June. When they arrived, they found only 5 Australians and one Briton remained of the original 470 prisoners who had left Sandakan in January.
Without accommodation, medicines or more than a handful of rice each day, the men were forced to work on heavy carrying parties. Many of them died. The few who remained alive were shot by the Japanese, it seems on 1 August.
The only prisoners to survive captivity at Sandakan were those who escaped in the last desperate days of 1945.
Six Australians survived. They suffered appalling conditions in the jungle. Finally, with the help of local people, they made contact with the Allied forces.
Commemoration of those who died
The POW campsite is now Sandakan Memorial Park where services are held on 25 April (Anzac Day) and 15 August.
In 1993, then Prime Minister Paul Keating, whose uncle died in Borneo in 1945, unveiled a memorial to Sandakan in Burwood Park, Sydney.
Sandakan was the subject of a 2004 opera, by Jonathan Mills, in collaboration with Singaporeans. Mr Mills' POW father was sent as a medical officer to Sandakan at the end of World War II.