Sandakan Prisoners of War Unit Plaque
- Appointment
- Unit Plaques
- Unit
- Sandakan Prisoners of War Memorial WWII
- Cause of death
- Died as a Prisoner of War
- Place of death
- North Borneo
- Plaque number
- MW63
- Dedicated by
- Borneo Prisoners of War Group on 26 August 2001
- More information
The Sandakan Prisoners of War Honour Plaque was dedicated by the Borneo Prisoners of War Group on 26 August 2001. The Group consisted of relatives of some of the Australian and British soldiers who had lost their lives while prisoners of Japanese Forces at or near Sandakan or Ranau, North Borneo (now Sabah, Malaysia), between 1942 and 1945. The Group also was instrumental in the construction of the Sandakan Memorial in Marri Walk, Kings Park, which was dedicated on Sandakan Day, August 28, 2005.
The prisoners consisted of mostly Australian and British soldiers captured when Japanese Forces occupied Singapore on 15 February 1942 and Java in March and April 1942. The soldiers were taken to Sandakan and forced to work on the construction of an airfield enduring conditions similar to those experienced during the construction of the infamous Thai-Burma railway. In August 1943, with the intention of controlling the soldiers by removing any commanders, most commissioned officer-ranked prisoners were moved by the Japanese from Sandakan to the Batu Lintang Camp at Kuching, Sarawak. After the removal of the commissioned officers, conditions for the remaining prisoners considerably worsened.
In early 1945 as Australian and United States Forces approached from the east across the Netherlands East Indies, the Japanese decided to withdraw to Ranau in the interior of North Borneo, taking the prisoners with them. A series of forced marches ensued where most of the prisoners died of ill-treatment or were killed. The first march occurred between January and March 1945, the second between May and June 1945, and a third commenced on 9 June 1945, but on this march, no prisoners survived beyond 50 kms from Sandakan. All remaining prisoners at Sandakan either died of starvation or sickness, or were killed before Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945.
Of the 2,434 allied prisoners incarcerated at Sandakan and Ranau between 1942 and 1945, only 6 Australian soldiers survived - all of whom had escaped. The Australian War Memorial states that “the Sandakan ‘death march’ remains the greatest single atrocity committed against Australians in war”. The three most senior Japanese commanders responsible for the atrocities committed against the prisoners of war were tried and found guilty of war crimes and executed in 1946.
Estimates place the number of civilian residents of North Borneo killed during the three years of Japanese occupation at 16% of the pre-war population.
The Borneo Prisoners of War Group compiled the Roll of Honour for Western Australians and their names are shown on the Sandakan Memorial in Marri Walk.
The Sandakan Prisoners of War are remembered with honour.
The plaques in the Kings Park Honour Avenues dedicated to the memory of individual Sandakan Prisoners of War can be found by entering the word Sandakan in the search box on the plaques’ search home page.