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Home , Sandakan, Sandakan Death Marches

Death Marches

Handout to accompany Prezi presentation: Canadian Veterans and Allied POWs in the Asia-: Wounds and Closure

Overview Sandakan, a city on the northeast coast of the island of , was the site of the Sandakan POW Camp between 1942 and 1945 that held more than 2,400 Australian and British POWs. The POWs at Sandakan were brought there from the Changi POW Camp () to construct a military airfield. At first, conditions at Sandakan POW Camp were decent, with adequate food and reasonable care. But from 1943, a change of guards at the camp and escape attempts by the POWs led to tighter camp security, increased violence against POWs, prolonged work hours and decreased food rations.

Fearing that the Allies would invaded Sandakan, so from early 1945, the POWs were divided into groups that left the camp progressively from late January until mid-June to march to , 260 kilometers away on the northwest coast of Borneo. These marches have come to be known as the “” due to the high death rates along the way. Those who couldn’t keep up due to illness or weakness were killed immediately and the marches continued on.

At Ranau, POWs were kept in horrid conditions with hardly any food and forced do perform hard labor. Diseases such as dysentery had become endemic. The few POWs who were still alive at Ranau at the end of August were killed by August 27th. Back in Sandakan, those who stayed behind faced severe malnutrition and rampant diseases. All of the remaining POWs in Sandakan POW camp were massacred by August 15th. The only survivors of the Sandakan POW Camp and the Sandakan Death Marches were 6 POWs who had managed to successfully escape.

(Handout for Canadian Hong Kong Veterans and Allied POWs: Wounds and Closure, prepared by BC ALPHA www.alpha- canada.org)

Testimony Excerpts

Excerpt from testimony of former POW Keith Botterill about the punishment cage set up at Sandakan POW Camp. Taken from the book “Hidden Horrors: in World War II” by Yuki Tanaka, p. 36

Forty days. The first seven days got no food. No water for the first three days. And then they forced you to drink until you were sick on the third night […] Every evening you would get a bashing. Hit with sticks and fists and kicking […] Not allowed to talk, we used to whisper. We had to kneel down all day, there wasn’t room to lay down at night, we’d all lay side-by-side, squashed up, and had to sit up again at dawn and kneel up—kneel down.

Excerpt from testimony of former Australian POW Keith Botterill about the Sandakan Retrieved from http://www.dva.gov.au/aboutDVA/publications/commemorative/sandakan/Documents/sandakan _book.pdf (p. 28)

I’ve seen men shot and bayoneted to death because they could not keep up with the party. We climbed this mountain about 30 miles out from Ranau, and we lost five men on that mountain in half a day. They shot five of them because they couldn’t continue. But I just kept plodding along. It was a dense jungle, I was heartbroken; but I thought there was safety in numbers. I just kept going.

Excerpt from testimony of former Australian POW Dick Moxham about the last leg of his journey to Ranau Retrieved from http://www.dva.gov.au/aboutDVA/publications/commemorative/sandakan/Documents/sandakan _book.pdf (p. 30)

One man was puffed up with beriberi in the legs and face, and was getting along all right on his own and could have made it; but the Japs would not let him alone, but tried to force him along, and eventually he collapsed. They kicked him on the ground. The Jap turned and saw the man had gone down, and he struck him over the head with his rifle butt. The soldier was left there. The party marched on.

(Handout for Canadian Hong Kong Veterans and Allied POWs: Wounds and Closure, prepared by BC ALPHA www.alpha- canada.org)

Three of the survivors of the Sandakan POW Camp and Death Marches (Keith Botterill is first from right). Only six survived this ordeal out of over 2400 POWs at the Sandakan POW Camp

This cemetery contained the graves of most of those POWs whose bodies were recovered from the cemeteries and other burial sites in and around the Sandakan POW Camp. It was formed on the site of the Sandakan military airstrip that had been constructed between 1942 and 1944 by the POWs.

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(Handout for Canadian Hong Kong Veterans and Allied POWs: Wounds and Closure, prepared by BC ALPHA www.alpha- canada.org)