Plan to honour Sandakan six

Murwillumbah RSL sub-branch treasurer Ken Liddelow and president Derek Sims with plans for the path. D125945

LOCAL RSL members have pleaded with Tweed Shire councillors to support building a memorial pathway near the Murwillumbah cenotaph to recognise six Tweed soldiers who died in the infamous Sandakan death march of World War II.

Murwillumbah RSL sub-branch president Derek Sims told councillors at a community access meeting on Thursday that their support would help in the battle to win funding for the memorial walk from the Federal Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

“We are seeking the blessing of council to go ahead with this project,” Mr Sims said.

“Six of those who died came from the Tweed. The path will be a reminder for the people who walk along there, not of the glory of war but the horror of war, the horrible things people do to each other in war.”

The march and harsh prisoner-of-war camps killed all but six of nearly 2700 allied POWs.

Sub-branch secretary Kevin Cheetham said when Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942, thousands of POWs were forced to build a new airfield near the village of Sandakan in north-eastern Borneo.

“They were undernourished and some of the terrible things you read did actually happen to them,” he added.

In 1945 as the war turned against the Japanese, the POWs were forced to march 249km to Ranau – “from one side of Borneo to the other”.

“Only six escaped and came back to Australia,” Mr Cheetham said.

Mr Sims said the planned pathway would be a fitting WWII memorial.

So far he was aware of only two other towns, Nambucca Heads and Tamworth, which had similar walkway memorials to the Sandakan death march.

“We are just trying to get a fitting World War II monument without have to build a great big monolith,” said Mr Sims.

“People will be able to walk up the pathway and see five plaques representing the five stages of the death march and three information boards.”

Councillors will consider whether to give their support to the project at Tuesday’s council meeting.

Council staff say the concrete path would replace an existing walkway which “has loose pavers and is overlaid with water in heavy rain”.

Mr Sims said Murwillumbah High School students who visited Sandakan and Ranau last year gathered soil samples from each end of the march route and brought them back through quarantine.

He said the samples would be placed in time capsules planted at either end of the memorial walk and opened on August 15, 2045 – 100 years after the end of World War II.