Sandakan (A Conspiracy of Silence)

It is August 1945 and World War II is over. Japan has surrendered. As the Western world rejoices, deep in the jungles of British North Borneo the small number of remaining Australian and British prisoners of war are massacred. Of the 2,434 prisoners incarcerated by the Japanese at the Sandakan POW camp, only six—all escapees—survived.

The POWs, sent from Singapore in 1942–43 to work on airfield construction, endured frequent beatings and other, more diabolical punishments. Sustained only by an inadequate and ever-diminishing rice ration and given little medical attention, many died of malnutrition, maltreatment, and disease.

In 1945, following an order from the Japanese High Command that no prisoners were to survive the war, those still able to walk were forced on a series of death marches into the interior. Anyone unable to keep up was ruthlessly murdered. Those left behind were systematically starved to death or massacred.

By late 1944, the Allies—aware that POWs were being eliminated—had devised a plan for their rescue. After months of bungling, the operation was cancelled in April 1945 under the mistaken belief that the camp had been evacuated. Gross incompetence and faulty intelligence doomed the rescue before it began. When it became clear that blunders and misjudgment had cost hundreds of lives, those at the highest levels shifted blame elsewhere and then embarked on a policy of deliberate suppression.

Through painstaking research, survivor interviews, and a detailed study of Japanese records, Lynette Silver has reconstructed a vivid and harrowing account of the lives and ultimate fate of the Sandakan prisoners. She tells a gripping and horrifying story—not only of the men themselves, but of the reasons their ordeal became one of World War II’s most deadly and closely guarded secrets.