Today was a sad day on an otherwise awesome holiday.
Today we learned about the Sandakan Death Marches.
I don’t know if I wasn’t paying attention, or if we were just never taught about this horrific saga in Australia’s military history, but I don’t ever recall hearing about the death marches during my school days.
So, for the uninitiated, the story goes like this:
The Japanese managed to capture quite a sizeable number of Australian troops on the island of Borneo during the Second World War. About 2500 of them ended up in POW camps in Sandakan (which is on the east coast of the island).
The Japanese High Command knew that they were losing the war, and they didn’t want the Australian troops to be saved, lest they treat the Japanese soldiers badly (should a role reversal eventuate).
But they didn’t want to waste the ammunition to just shoot them all.
So the order came down. “March them through the jungles, no shoes, no food, no water. March them until they die.”
And that is what happened.
Of those two and a half thousand men, a total of 6 survived. And they only survived because they managed to escape their captors and hide in villages along the route.
In total, they were marched approximately 260km through the jungle (not following paths, just straight through virgin rainforest) from Sandakan to Ranau.
260k’s, with no machete to help cut a swathe through the undergrowth (and I can confirm from personal experience, these jungles are full of plants that rip and claw at you should you brush up against them), no shoes on your feet, no food in your belly, no water (and you sweat out every bit of moisture you’ve got in this climate)… just horrible.
On top of that, you’ve got dysentery, malaria, typhoid, and brutal Japanese guards only too happy to beat you if you fell from exhaustion.
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Today, there is a beautiful (if that’s the right word for it) memorial to the marches in a town called Kundasang, which is not far from Ranau. The first seven images in this set were taken there.
The Aussies in our group (Cath, Max and I, plus the family from Melbourne) all came away absolutely stunned by the stories we’d heard.
And in what can only be described as a case of “What a small world”, I posted the image of the poppies on the Honour Roll to Facebook that night. The following morning I received a message from an industry colleague in Sydney who advised me that his Great Uncle had been a victim of the Sandakan Death Marches, and that his name was almost visible in the shot I had posted!
Well, you’d think that this experience could have ruined our day, and it certainly was a solemn bus ride back towards Kota Kinabalu. But the afternoon would prove to lift our spirits again, with a visit to the Shangri-La Rasa Ria Resort and Orang Utan Sanctuary just north of the capital.
Photographically, this proved to be a real challenge.
Our viewing platform was a good 10-15 metres from the ropes that the baby orang utans were swinging on. On top of that, they were constantly moving between a) direct sunlight, b) dappled light, and c) complete shade.
The only thing for it was to shoot full manual exposure, with fill flash. Thank goodness I had my most powerful (GN:58) flash with me, ’cause I had that puppy zoomed to 105mm and firing at full power. Unfortunately though, I had bought “fresh” batteries at a service station half an hour before which turned out to be not-so-fresh after all. Just great. Every time I fired off a shot, I’d have to wait 10-15 seconds before the flash would be ready to fire again, during which time, I’d missed about half a dozen potentially great shots. Lesson learned. Come prepared.
That evening, we visited the Mari Mari Cultural Village, where members of the various native tribes of Borneo showed off traditional accommodation, methods of cooking, ceremonial dances and various other culturally significant activities.
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