Talk:Sandakan Death Marches

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Untitled[edit]

So was it six Australian soldiers who were the surviving Allied soldiers, or was it five Australians and a Brit?

As the article says, the "five Australians and one British soldier" mentioned were the only survivors from the first march still alive on June 26. It doesn't mean that they were the POWs who escaped and survived. Grant | Talk 03:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rescue Attempt?[edit]

My memory maybe fuzzy, but I seem to remember a few years ago there was some controversy to came up regarding a rescue mission that was planned but scrapped. Anyone care to confirm or elaborate? Signal Buster (talk) 08:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Survivors[edit]

Sandakan is a bit out of my research area, but I think the sentence in the lead "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" is wrong - surely it should be qualified to "of all the prisoners who had been incarcerated at Sandakan and Ranau and were sent on the death marches, only six Australians survived ..."? I have refs to two or three separate escapes of POWs from Sandakan in 1942-3 - however my sources (Peter Firkins, 1995 Borneo Surgeon and David Matthews 2008 The Duke A Hero's Hero at Sandakan Captain Lionel Matthews GC, MC) contradict each other and I haven't read any of Lynette Silver's or other authors' work on Sandakan which I am sure will contain much more detail.

What is clear is that one escape was of 3 POWs in April or May 1943: Sgt Walter Wallace, Pte Howard Harvey and Pte Theodore MacKay (serving as McKenzie). Harvey and MacKay were recaptured by the Japanese and executed but Wallace escaped to Berhala Island and from there to Tawi Tawi. Wallace wrote Escape from Hell: the Sandakan Story in c1958 so clearly survived the war, along with Campbell, Braithwaite, Short, Sticpewich, Botterill and Moxham who survived the 1945 death marches by escaping, so the total is at least 7. I am not sure if there were any survivors from any other of the 1942-3 escape attempts from the camp itself. Jasper33 (talk) 14:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Crimes against humanity category removal[edit]

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