SIX SURVIVE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22210, 21 December 1946, Page 3

SIX SURVIVE

BORNEO HELL CAMPS STORY DEATH MARCH ORDEAL JAPANESE SAVAGERY (10 a.m.) TOKYO. Dec. 20. Of all the British and Australian soldiers imprisoned at Sandakan and Ranau camps, in North Borneo, only six are 'alive to-day, declared Warrant Officer Sticpewich, giving evidence before the War Crimes Tribunal. The prisoners died through beatings, tortura executions, overwork and starvation ’at,the two camps, or through the rigours' of the 160-mile jungle march from Sandakan to Ranau when the Japanese were fleeing in 1945. Warrant Officer Sticpewich said the sick who were left behind at Sandakan were not killed outright. The Jap-

ariese did not bother to do that, but ]ust left them to die without food or water. Warrant Officer Sticpewich. who was one of the survivors of the death march, relived in the witnessbox his long jungle ordeal. He told of stragglers beaten to the earth when they were unabje to propel their weary, sick bodies at 'the pace set by the Japanese. Aftermath of the March Then glaring often at General Tojo and other high-ranking defendants, the witness described the aftermath of the march. He said he was now with a graves registration unit and. during the past year had been working in North Borneo uncovering the bodies of his former mates. Thus far. in the Sandakan area. 280 bodies had been recovered, of which 80 per cent had their skulls broken, jaws smashed and faces kicked in. indicating they were brutally murdered.

Sisiter Vivian Bullinkel, who held the rank of captain in the Australian Army Nursing Service, told the tribunal that after the survivors of a bombed ship reached the beach on Banks Island, near Sumarta. and surrendered, 23 Australian nurses were driven into the sea and machine-gunned and 15 stretcher cases were bayoneted.