Sandakan Death Marches-60 years ago today

[Platypus]

60 years ago today, thousands of allied troops, primarily Australian, but also British, Dutch, Kiwi and American, started a series of marches that would cost thousands of lives.

2396 Australians were marched from the Sandakan camps. Only six survived; it is considered the greatest atrocity every committed against Australian POWs at least, if not all POWs anywhere, ever-even worse then the Burma railroad. Not as many people died as in other situations, but with only 6 Aussies out of  almost 2 and a half thousand surviving, it is undoubtably tragic. I don't know the figures on other nationalities, but I presume they wouldn't be better. So whilst today we remember Auschwitz, let us also remember Sandakan and the Death Marches.

"...Age shall not weary them, not time condemn."

[Platypus]

touched by the concern, fellas (and the couple of girls). 25 hours and not one reply. Ignoring events like this does not make me feel the future is encouraging. If people like us, interested in world events, can't bother to be interested in this, then how can we know it won't happen again.

Think about this for a moment. Thousands of young men are detained in POW camps that are more revolting then anwhere known today. After years of torture in this hellhole, they are told, at gunpoint, tho march barefoot through the jungles of Borneo. Many die from infections, some from exhaustion, others from starvation, and hundreds by gunpoint. Only SIX survive. Can you imagine what they had to go through to get to freeedom, and have their story known? And can you imagine if they, too, died? The world should be honoured to even know of this horrific and tragic event in the world's history. Yes, it is focussed on Australia and didn't affect americans as much. But the fact that humans could do this to other humans, Australian, American, or anything else, crosses over borders and seas. We have to care. It is our duty to the six who survived to tell us about it, and the thousands who died whose legacy must surely be to not allow it to happen to others.

Never forget, mates. And if you end up being marched through the jungles of Borneo, with literally hundreds of ways to die all staring in your face, think back to Sandakan and wish the world had remembered it. None of us will have to go through this most likely, and as long as we remember it it probably won't. But the burden now lies on us to mourn, commemerate and ponmise that those who died did not leave a legacy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Nothing to add really

[The Duke]

I noticed, but I didn't have anything to say except to add the Bataan death march to the thread.  A horrible thing.

[WMS]

I read it when you posted it, but I didn't really have anything to add - it was a very nasty war.

[Silent Hunter]

I've read it and I have nothing further to add. They will never be forgotten.