Sandakan War Memorial

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This morning we caught a taxi out to the Sandakan War Memorial this morning which is just outside town. Its on the site of a Japanese POW camp which was used to hold British and Australian prisoners during World War 2. The camp held 2700 prisoners of which only 6 Australians (who managed to escape) survived.

The site has been made into a memorial by the Australian government and was fantastic. The main pavilion has an extremely well presented history with photos of the camp and quotes from survivors. We spent about an hour reading all the information and looking at the photos, then walked around the grounds and saw an excavator, boiler, water tanks etc from when the camp was operational. The majority of the camp was destroyed by the Japanese just before they abandoned the site and marched the prisoners 250km to Ranau at the base of Mt. Kinabalu when they heard the Allies were approaching.

It was definitely worth the visit and we were both quite impressed by the monument.

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