Petagas War Memorial - The Other Memorials - Ranau and Sandakan

Ranau and Sandakan

The Kinabalu Guerrillas and the other resistance groups not only fought the Japanese, many of them risked their lives trying to help the large numbers of British and Australian prisoners of war (POWs) who were transferred from Singapore. In early 1945, to prevent escapes by the POWs, the Japanese force-marched more than 2000 allied POWs from Sandakan all the way to Ranau, across the breadth of Sabah. This is often referred to as the Sandakan Death Marches. Due to ill-treatment, physical exhaustion, starvation and lack of medical care, only 6 men survived. Today, their sacrifice are remembered in annual memorial services conducted in Sandakan and at the Kundasang MemorialPark. It is said that as the allied forces approach Borneo and began to bomb Japanese military targets, that at least 33 POWs were executed. Returning allied forces also found many Red Cross parcels of food and medicine that were not distributed or used on the POWs.

The irony of the death marches, which killed scores of allied soldiers, was that the Japanese had their own taste of the marches. After the Japanese surrender, units on the west coast were asked to meet up in Jesselton to be disarmed. Along the way, they were attacked by native forces under the command of ex-Chief Inspector Dualis, formerly of the North Borneo Armed Constabulary. Dualis was a Murut, whose men revived the old tradition of head-hunting. Nobody knows how many Japanese soldiers died along the route. It must be said that Dualis and his men were harasssing the Japanese through the entire occupation period from 1942-1945.

The ordinary residents of Sandakan also suffered greatly. As a result of allied bombings, the entire town was razed to the ground by the Japanese. They did this as a reprisal against the residents for supporting the allies and also to deny the town infastrucutre to the anticipated allied invading forces. After the war, the residents of Sandakan and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce built memorials dedicated to those who died especially those community leaders who were massacred on 27 May 1945, a few months shy of the Japanese surrender on 9 Sep 1945. Those killed included staff of the Chinese Consulate. As a result, Sandakan lost almost the entire generation of pre-war Chinese leaders. This was to change the landscape of post-war community and political leadership.