Sandakan Prisoner of War MemorialPrint Page

The walkway contains bronze plaques commemorating the sacrifice paid by the prisoners-of-war (POW`s) during the death marches in Borneo during World War Two.

Information boards outline one of the cruellest episodes Australian soldiers had to endure as prisoners of the Japanese between January and June 1945. It is dedicated to the 2,434 Australian (including ten men from the Tweed ) and British soldiers POWs sent to Borneo in 1942 to build a military airfield for their captors.

The Sandakan Death Marches were a series of forced marches in Borneo from Sandakan to Ranau which resulted in the deaths of more than 3,600 Indonesian civilian slave labourers and 2,400 Allied prisoners of war held captive by the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War Two at prison camps in North Borneo. By the end of the war, of all the prisoners who had been incarcerated at Sandakan and Ranau, only six Australians survived, all of whom had escaped. It is widely considered to be the single worst atrocity suffered by Australian servicemen during World War Two.

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