AAP General News (Australia)
08-13-2010
Sandakan survivor silent to the end
* Governor-General Quentin Bryce will represent Australia at the 65th anniversary of
the Sandakan Death Marches in East Malaysia from this Saturday to next Monday. She will
join more than 100 Australians, including former Sandakan POWs Russ Ewin and Lesley Bunny
Glover, at a memorial ceremony at Sandakan Memorial Park this Sunday.
** Queenslander Owen Campbell was the last survivor of the infamous Sandakan death
marches, one of the darkest episodes of World War Two. Taken prisoner by the Japanese
after the fall of Singapore in 1942, Mr Campbell was transferred to Sandakan, Borneo,
the following year. He and the other prisoners endured forced labour, beatings, torture,
a starvation diet and illness. In 1945 two groups of about 500 of the fittest prisoners
were marched out of the camp to Ranau. Men soon began dying of disease and exhaustion.
Some were murdered. About six days into the march, when allied aircraft strafed his group,
Mr Campbell and four comrades escaped into the jungle. One died during the escape and
three others were killed after reaching the coast. Mr Campbell, sick and near death, was
saved by a local guerrilla leader who fed and hid him from the Japanese until he could
be taken through enemy lines and be rescued. He died in 2003 aged 87. Three years earlier,
on January 26, 2000, he was awarded an Order of Australia medal. The following article
is based on an interview he gave on that occasion to AAP Senior Correspondent Doug Conway.
**
By Doug Conway
SYDNEY, Aug 12 AAP - Not even an Australia Day honour will coax 84-year-old Owen Campbell
to talk about the atrocities he and 2,400 other prisoners of war suffered in North Borneo
in 1945.
"I won't be in it," said Mr Campbell, the last man alive of the five who managed to
escape, thanks to the native jungle dwellers who scorned Japanese reward money and death
threats to harbour them.
"They've asked me to do a book but I say nothing doing. Never. Just let sleeping dogs lie.
"They (the victims) still have relatives and family alive. It would just upset them,
to think about what their loved ones suffered on that march."
Mr Campbell won't even record the details on archival tape for public release generations hence.
He occasionally talks about the war in general terms to his family - his wife of 59
years, Evelyn, five children, 14 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
"But I don't tell them anything about the atrocities," he said from his Beachmere home,
north of Brisbane.
He does, however, believe that authorities should keep alive the Sandakan story, which
RSL official Bruce Ruxton has called the greatest tragedy ever encountered by the Australian
Army and "the worst brutality meted out to any POWs this century, outside of concentration
camps".
"It's getting known more in schools now," Mr Campbell said.
"And the people of Sandakan will keep it alive. They're well up on it."
Mr Campbell holds no grudges against the younger generations of Japanese.
"They weren't even alive at the time," he said. "But the old blokes I'll never forget or forgive.
"I still have nightmares - a few bad ones. They're getting less and less. But you never forget."
Mr Campbell has been back to Sandakan five times but there won't be a sixth return visit.
"I'm not going any more. I said my goodbyes last time. I'm too old in the tooth to
be fluttering about."
He described his own survival as a miracle, made possible by determination - "I decided
they weren't going to beat me" - and the thought of his family back at home.
"The bloke upstairs helped a lot, too, no two ways about that. Somebody is definitely
ruling the roost."
Mr Campbell said a sense of humour was normally a prerequisite for POWs but it made
no difference at Sandakan.
"There was no humour on the march," he said.
"Everyone was sick. It was just too serious."
AAP dc/jnb/de/br/dep
KEYWORD: SANDAKAN CAMPBELL (AAP BACKGROUNDER) RPTG
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