Sandakan

The untold story of the Sandakan Death Marches of the Second World War. This is the story of the three-year ordeal of the Sandakan prisoners of war, a barely known episode of unimaginable horror.

After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, the Japanese conquerors transferred 2,500 British and Australian prisoners to a jungle camp some eight miles inland of Sandakan, on the east coast of North Borneo. For decades after the Second World War, the Australian and British governments would refuse to divulge the truth of what happened there, for fear of traumatising the families of the victims and enraging the people.

The prisoners were 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. Only an incredibly resilient few managed to withstand the pain without yielding to the hated Kempei-tai, the Japanese military police.

But this was only the beginning of the nightmare. In late 1944, Allied aircraft were attacking the coastal towns of Sandakan and Jesselton. To escape the bombardment, the Japanese resolved to abandon the Sandakan camp and force the prisoners into a series of death marches, a story long overshadowed by other wartime atrocities.

Sandakan by Paul Ham unveils this harrowing history, providing a deeply moving narrative that ensures the memory of those who suffered shall never fade. It offers insight into the depths of human endurance under the harshest conditions and reminds us of the cruelties of war that should never be forgotten.