Page 6 - eMuse Vol.9 No.11

Sandakan

LEST WE FORGET

The worst atrocity suffered by Australian
The w or s t a tr ocity suff er ed b y Aus tr alian

vicemen in WWII. Out of 2,434 Allied
ser
servicemen in WWII. Out of 2,434 Allied
troops only six of ours survived.
tr oop s only six of our s sur viv ed.

When I was little I knew him as the fat man up the road with and the Burma Railway. But, for us Australians, by far the
the flash rose garden. Not a blade of grass or a single leaf worst of them came from the infamous Sandakan Death
out of place. The roses were the brightest red. He often said, Marches. Only six diggers survived to tell the tale.
There’s a reason for that.” But he never gave it. I sensed it In 1942 about 3,500 men, British and Australian, had been
was important. brought to Sandakan camp to build an airfield for the Japa-
On Anzac day every year, he watched the parade through nese. At the beginning of 1945 2,434 men survived, the death
teary eyes from his window. He never joined in. I enlisted in rate having increased dramatically at the end of 1944 when
the CMF just after I left school. He showed an interest in my the meagre food allowance was cut again.
unit. I suspected he knew its history inside out.
In the course of these conversations he once mentioned
he was in 8 Divvy. He never said much more but from that I
knew he was a POW and nothing more needed to be said. I
learned his rose garden was “for the mates.”

Prisoners in a Jap POW camp.

As the area started to suffer from Allied bombing raids, the
Japanese decided to march the PoWs 164 miles into the jun-
gle interior to Ranau. It was a decision at first welcomed by
Allied soldiers taken prisoner after the fall of Singapore. the PoWs who had suffered fatalities from the bombing them-
selves. They could not have been more wrong.
Like my friend, most POWs carried emotional and physical None of the approximately 800 British PoWs would survive
scars with them for the rest of their lives. A list of atrocities the ordeal of the march and accompanying massacres and
they were subjected to by their captors is endless. atrocities. And only six Australians were alive at the end of the
We’ve heard many a horror story from places like Changi war. Two of those survivors:
6 eMuse November 2020