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Catalogue  > POW Changi Sandakan Burma Railway  > Sandakan




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Sandakan by Paul Ham; THIS IS A STORY of the descent into the very heart of darkness. After the fall of Singapore, in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors rounded up tens of thousands of British and Australian soldiers and shipped them to prison camps scattered throughout Hirohito's newly won Empire. The fall of Britain's 'impregnable fortress' was the greatest humiliation in British military history, for which Churchill never forgave the Japanese. But nothing would surpass the wretched fate of some 2,700 British and Australian prisoners who were shipped to British North Borneo later that year. They landed in Sandakan, on the east coast of the island, after a 10-day voyage on a Japanese 'hell' ship, and were herded into a jungle camp some eight miles inland. Thus began the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war - a barely known story of unimaginable horror. Indeed, for decades after the war, the Australian and British governments refused to divulge the truth of what happened here, for fear of traumatising the families of the victims and enraging the people. Few episodes in the annals of human suffering match the torments inflicted on these men - broken, beaten, worked to death, thrown into bamboo cages on the slightest pretext, starved and subjected to tortures so ingenious and hideous that none survived the onslaught with their minds intact, and only an incredibly resilient few managed to withstand the pain without yielding to the hated Kempei-tai, the Japanese military police. Changi and other prison-of-war camps were, in relative terms, tolerable; at least they offered a chance of survival. Sandakan offered no hope at all. And yet, even under such inhuman treatment, the prisoners of Sandakan managed to organise an underground resistance movement, relying on the phenomenal bravery of the native people and a few white civilians. Together, they built a radio: they smuggled in the parts, as well as medicines and rice; and got out messages to the US and Australian Special Forces. Alas, it all came to nothing when, in October 1943, a local traitor betrayed the network to the Japanese. The Kempei-tai arrested 80 prisoners and civilians, tortured the truth from them and, in early 1944, executed the key suspects. But this was only the beginning of the nightmare awaiting the surviving prisoners, who were now subjected to the full cruelty of the Japanese army. In late 1944, Allied aircraft were attacking the coastal towns of Sandakan and Jessleton (now Kota Kinabalu). To escape the bombardment, the Japanese resolved to abandon the Sandakan prison camp and move inland, taking the prisoners with them as slave labour, carriers and draught horses. Their journey became known as the Sandakan Death Marches. About 1,000 Australian and British prisoners, already weak and sick, were force-marched to Ranau, about 250 miles west, over high mountains, across rivers and swamps, and into the heart of the Borneo jungle. Wracked by dysentery, beri beri, and malaria, hungry and exhausted, dressed in loin cloths, lacking shoes and adequate food, hundreds of men perished en route; those who couldn't go on were bayoneted or shot where they fell by the Japanese and Formosan guards. Of the 500 prisoners who set off on the First March, in January 1945, seven were alive in June when the few survivors of the Second March staggered into Ranau. Of the 75 walking skeletons who set off on the Third Death March, in July, none reached the 30-mile mark. Those too sick to leave Sandakan died where they lay abandoned, in stretchers on the fringes of the jungle beside the burnt out husk of the prison camp. One of the last survivors, a British naval officer, was crucified - the final act of hatred as the Japanese prepared to face an ignominious defeat. Of 2,700 prisoners sent to Sandakan, and on the death marches, just six survived, all Australians. They managed to escape into the jungle, and into the hands of friendly natives, who hid and nourished them, and then smuggled them to the coast. Their weeks spent eluding Japanese capture is itself an epic of human endurance - culminating in their return to Borneo in 1946, to identify their former tormentors at the War Crimes Trials. As a result, the Japanese officers and Formosan guards responsible for these atrocities were hung, shot or imprisoned. This book narrates the full story of Sandakan in unflinching detail, as told through the experiences of many of the participants. Paul Ham has interviewed the families of survivors and the deceased, in Australia, Britain and Borneo, and consulted thousands of court documents, in an effort to piece together exactly what happened to the soldiers, and their civilian supporters, who suffered and died in British North Borneo - and who was responsible.
 
Details
 
SKU:9781864711400
Quantity:- out of stock -
Author/s: Paul Ham
Printing Year: 2012 1st edition
Printing &/or Publishing Information: Random House
ISBN: 9781864711400
Book Format: Hardcover
Pages: 672
Condition: new
Weight:0.50 kg
Price:$ 39.95
 

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