Sandakan Death Marches were a series of marches of Allied war prisoners during World War II (1939-1945). They took place on the island of Borneo, in the South China Sea, from January to June 1945. Japanese troops forced prisoners to march roughly 160 miles (260 kilometers) from Sandakan to Ranau, in what is now Malaysia. Hundreds of Australian and British prisoners of war (POW’s) died on the marches. Hundreds more died in prisoner camps in the area. Causes of death included sickness, starvation, and mistreatment by Japanese soldiers.
Background.
Early on Dec. 8, 1941 (December 7 in the United States), Japanese troops landed in southern Thailand and northern Malaya (now part of Malaysia). That same day, the United Kingdom declared war on Japan. In early 1942, the Japanese invaded Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies (present-day Indonesia). Malaya and Singapore were British colonies at that time. Japanese troops defeated the British and Commonwealth troops defending those colonies. Thousands of Allied troops were killed and wounded. Tens of thousands became prisoners of war.
Prisoners at Sandakan.
The Japanese sent Allied POW’s to a number of camps around Southeast Asia. About 2,700 POW’s were taken to Sandakan to build roads and an airfield. The Japanese also forced some 3,600 Javanese (people from the Indonesian island of Java) and local civilians to work at Sandakan.
Initially, the Sandakan POW’s lived under fairly humane conditions. But in 1943, the Japanese discovered a radio that had been secretly built in the POW compound. They also learned that some Australian POW’s had been interacting with local resistance forces. In retaliation, the Japanese executed an Australian officer and eight civilian suspects. The Japanese moved most of the officer prisoners to another camp across Borneo. The Japanese then forced rigid discipline upon the remaining Sandakan POW’s.
In 1944, as the war worsened for the Japanese, so did conditions for the Sandakan POW’s. Food rations were cut back, reaching near-starvation levels by early 1945. The compound had few medical supplies, and prison guards abused, overworked, and tortured POW’s.
The marches.
In early 1945, the Japanese decided to move the more than 1,000 remaining Sandakan POW’s across Borneo to Jesselton (present-day Kota Kinabalu). A first march of about 450 prisoners—split into groups of 50—left Sandakan in late January. A second march of more than 500 POW’s left Sandakan in late May. A third march of 75 POW’s left in mid-June. The groups followed a track through swamps and over rugged mountain terrain. People who were too ill or weak to keep up—hundreds of POW’s, and also some Japanese guards—were killed or left to die along the track.
Allied air strikes on Borneo’s west coast forced the Japanese to halt the marches at Ranau, still in Borneo’s interior highlands. March survivors were held there with little food, water, or shelter. A last group of more than 200 POW’s never left Sandakan.
Aftermath.
Japan agreed to surrender in August 1945. But by the end of that month, all the POW’s at Ranau and Sandakan were dead—victims of illness, starvation, brutality, or execution. Just six Australian POW’s survived by escaping into the jungle. Local civilians sheltered the Australians until Allied forces arrived.
The Japanese abandoned and burned parts of the POW camp at Sandakan. After the war, Allied troops found hundreds of shallow graves at the camp, along with many personal items. The remains of hundreds more POW’s were found along the track to Ranau. In total, 1,787 Australian and 641 British POW’s died at Sandakan, at Ranau, or during the marches. Most of the 3,600 civilian laborers died of illness or starvation. Several Japanese officers and guards from Ranau and Sandakan were found guilty of war crimes and executed.
Sandakan Memorial Park marks the site of the Sandakan POW camp. At Kundasang, a village near Ranau, a War Memorial and Gardens of Remembrance commemorate the Allied and civilian dead. A number of other memorials commemorate individual POW’s or groups of individuals. Most of the Allied dead—largely unidentified—now rest in a British Commonwealth cemetery on the nearby island of Labuan.
See also Borneo ; Sandakan ; Singapore, Battle of ; World War II (The war in Asia and the Pacific) .
