Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2013 ISBN 9780733629891
Sandakan - a name that sends a chill of horror through any Australian who knows something about the Pacific War. The full extent of the horror hits any visitor to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, where there is a wall mounted montage of photographs of the Australian servicemen who were known to be in the camp - about 2000 men - with those that died greyed out and only those surviving shown in sharp contrast.....six men.
That only six survived the Sandakan "death marches" is a relatively well known fact, but much of what led up to this appalling tragedy is not as well-known, and shrouded in myth and half-truth. Michele Cunningham, in this well-written account, has picked out as much truth as she can from those myths, using contemporary documents, transcripts from war trials, and interviews with survivors (her father was in Sandakan before being moved to Kuching camp along with all other officers in 1943).
We know how the Sandakan tragedy ended up, so it's a grim irony that the Australians that were sent there were volunteers for the most part, lured from Changi on the promise of more food and better conditions. The prisoners (and the almost 1,000 British soliders that came later) were taken to Sandakan to build airstrips for the Japanese Army. The treatment meted out to them was brutal from the start, and became worse as time went on, and the food was never adequate, and became less so as time went on.
By the time of the first "death march" in January 1945, the prisoners were certainly in no state to undertake heavy physical labour, and most were not in a state to be forced to march for nine days through thick jungle on a poorly constructed track. And yet that is what they now had to do, with only half the rations required to undertake the journey. The result was tragically predictable - most of the prisoners died, either on the march, or once they had reached their destination. It is here that Cunningham usefully unravels one of the myths of the marches: many of the prisoners died of the effects of prolonged malnutrition and the exertion of marching, rather than being shot by the Japanese (although the Japanese did shoot many who could not continue). The Japanese did kill the remaining prisoners during August 1945, but by that time most were already dead. Cunningham also shows us that many Japanese troops also died on these marches, as by 1945 supply was so poor that they were also suffering from lack of food and medicine. The six prisoners that survived escaped from the camp, or while on the march. There were other escapees, but they died before they could reach safety.
Cunningham spends a large portion of the book discussing Operation Kingfisher, which has been described as an aborted rescue mission for the prisoners, and has been the cause of some controversy. She quite convincingly puts to bed the notion that a rescue mission was set to go but not given approval by HQ. While many of the operations in Borneo had as one of their objectives to find out more information about the location and condition of prisoners, none of them had developed a plan to rescue them, and any claims to the contrary are simply wrong. As Cunningham shows, there was not the logistical ability to be able to storm the camps and get the prisoners away, even if they were in good health. There was also a very real fear on the Allied side that the Japanese would simply massacre the prisoners if they thought a rescue attempt was underway. In the end the Allies did come after the surrender, but it was too late for those at Sandakan.
In her search for evidence about what happened to the prisoners, Cunningham has read not only the transcripts of the War Crimes trials of the guards and commanders of the prison camp, but also where possible the interrogations of the six survivors, and has uncovered some disturbing discrepancies in statements and evidence, given with (understandable) vindictiveness as a driving force. In particular, it seems that WO Bill Sticpewich was not above fabricating or conflating evidence to ensure conviction of certain guards. It also seems that his advice to the court as to the general behaviour of guards in the camp (i.e. whether they were brutal, or helpful to the prisoners) materially affected the sentences handed out. While this behaviour is understandable, it belies the Allies claim of impartial justice meted out after the war.
Cunningham also doesn't hold back on evidence that the prisoners in Sandakan did not always pull together as team, as evidenced by the petty theft and shirking that she shows occurred during the prisoner's ordeal. War is a great leveller, and a great revealer of humankind, and those in the camps were no different - some were brave and others weren't, some gave of themselves to help the group, and others took from the group to help themselves. In the end (nearly) all of the prisoners met the same fate.
This book is well researched, and well argued. As much as is possible Hell on Earth is a definitive account of one of the darkest chapters in Australian military history. Well worth reading.
Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell
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