600 DEAD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 1 September 1945, Page 5

600 DEAD

AUSTRALIAN PRISONERS IN BORNEO OVERWORKED, STARVED AND NEGLECTED Sydney. This Day. About 600 Australian prisoners died at Sandakan (North-East Borneo) between November 1944 and May this year. They were cruelly treated, overworked, starved and neglected and died of malaria, beri-beri and dysentery, hut could have been raved 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 hospital at Morotai after wandering for Z‘ l days in the jungle before being found by a friendly native. Campbell, who was taken prisoner at Singapore, said it was not uncommon for prisoners to be worked twentyfour hours at a stretch, sometimes twice weekly. “Bashings were handed out pretty liberally. 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 Hog piisotiers with a dog whip ancl once made all the officers stand by while they whipped one of our men. ’ Gunner Campbell declared one man was shot for trying to escape from Sandakan. where Campbell was tuken in January this year. The Japanese commandant then starved olj the prisoners for twenty-four hours.

“Close on 6QO Australians ace buried at Sandakan. 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, concluded Gunner Campbell.