The Sandakan Death March

In the late hours of our first camp, as I lie awake listening to the piercing cry of the jungle, I’m consumed by thoughts of what the marching PoWs would have been going through, what they would have already endured just to get here. Although it wasn’t made clear to them at the time, they were to be used as pack animals for the Imperial Army’s retreat to Western Sabah. The PoWs would be marched along a freshly hacked trail through the heart of the jungle. They would be pushed, prodded and beaten; those unable to continue would be killed.

Orders from Tokyo had been explicit: “…it is the aim not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not to leave any traces.” The command had ruled that the prisoners had to die, and the Imperial army decided they would die with a purpose. But when, on the January 26, 1945, the Sandakan camp commander Susumi Hoshijima announced that a select 500 of the fittest PoWs would march West to a site with more food and better living conditions, it created a stir.

Richard Murray was already a defeated man, yet he was selected for the first march. You would never have guessed that the enlisted man had been a welterweight boxer champion five years earlier. His charisma and warm smile may have been intact, but his Celtic good looks had melted from his frame. Would his wife and son back home recognize him? Murray had somehow escaped the ravages of disease that swept the camp—with this lucky break, he might survive after all.

Joining him on the march was Keith Botterill, his brother-in-arms. The two had met on the day of their enlistment, and had stayed close ever since. Through the fighting and the defeat in Singapore, the subsequent incarceration in Selarang, on the tortuous ocean voyage to Sandakan, and in the hell of the PoW camp, the two had been inseparable. That they would be together on the march was a great relief to both. They set off at dawn on January 31 with hopes of something better.

Awaiting them on the trail a few kilometres outside the camp was a mountain of gear that belonged to 47 Japanese troops of the Yamamoto Butai. Bags of food, equipment, ammunition and even a dismantled mountain gun were added to their kit. If the added weight wasn’t enough, the rubber slip-on shoes issued to them that morning were worse than useless. The bulk of the men were walking barefoot by the end of the day. At least they had some food.

Over the first few days, heavy rains and knee deep mud took its toll on the PoWs and Japanese soldiers alike; by the morning of day four, a young Australian NCO declared he could go no further. His beriberi was so far advanced that his grossly distended limbs would no longer function. He was shot.

For the following week the march was tough but bearable; the Japanese soldiers enforced a 10 minute rest every hour, but they also coaxed the PoWs to keep going with “just one extra mile” toward the end of each day. The prisoners fell into a dazed routine. Escape would have been easy—just slip away into the forest unnoticed—but the prospect of trying to survive alone in the jungle was too frightening.

Everything changed when the group reached Boto on the twelfth day. The deeper they pressed into the jungle, the leaner the Japanese re-supply drops along the route. When the 49 prisoners arrived at Boto they were presented with nothing more than six cucumbers and a sprinkling of rice. At the next drop in Paginatan, many days of trekking and a mountain range away, the rations were only slightly more.

Millipedes as thick as my index finger march defiantly down the trail, and ants the size of a child’s toy watch us with amusement. The yapping of ornery, underfed dogs is always an indication there’s a household close by. We occasionally stumble upon native families, out on the land, tapping into whatever they can, to survive. As an expression of their traditional beliefs, the native people build their homes on stilts, in order to be above the spirits that they believe travel on the ground. It’s a pragmatic architectural feature, providing cover for their animals and protection from flood. But the spiritual element can’t be overstated. The native people believe there are a lot of restless souls here. I believe it too.

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