METHODS IN BORNEO

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 54, 1 September 1945, Page 7

METHODS IN BORNEO

BASHINGS AND FLOGGINGS

SYDNEY, August 31. About 600 Australian prisoners died at Sandakan (north-east Boiuieo) between November, 1944, and May of this year. They were cruelly treated, overworked, starved, and neglected, and died of malaria, beri bed, and dysentery, but they could have been saved if the Japanese had provided medical supplies. These revealing facts were told by Gunner Owen Campbell, of Brisbane, who escaped from Sandakan at the end of May. He is now recovering in a hospital at Morotai after wandering for 24 days in the jungle before being found by a friendly native. Gunner Campbell, who was taken prisoner at Singapore, said it was not uncommon for prisoners to be worked 24 hours at a stretch, sometimes twice a week. "Bashings were handed out pretty liberally," he said. "If the Japanese thought you were not working fast enough they just hit you with shovels, bits of wood, or lumps of iron. They used to flog prisoners with a dog whip, and once they made all the officers stand by while they whipped one of our men." Gunner Campbell declared that one man was shot for trying to escape from Sandakan, where Campbell was taken in January of this year. The Japanese commandant then starved all the prisoners for 24 hours. "Close on 600 Australians are buried at Sandakan," he said. "They could have been saved if the Japanese had given us medical supplies. We had to bury our boys in common graves five or six at a time."