SANDAKAN HISTORY DOC - Department of Veterans' Affairs

indeed and Sato [Sergeant Sato Shinichi] without telling me anything
about it took him into the jungle and bayoneted him to death. Endo
[Private Endo Hirkaki] and Sato told me that 16 had died on the way
from Sandakan to Boto but they did not give any details of the deaths.
Groups 1 to 5 all marched through to Ranau, losing 70 out of
265 POWs along the way. Groups 6 to 9 were held at the
village of Paginatan, ostensibly because there was no
accommodation for them at Ranau. Private William Dick
Moxham, 2/15th Australian Field Regiment, was with Group 7
and he recalled their progress over the 200-odd kilometres
between Sandakan and Paginatan:
Men from my own party could not go on. Boto was the first place where
we actually had to leave anyone. They remained there, at this Jap dump.
At the next place, at the bottom of a big hill, we left two more men.
Later, we heard shots, and we thought the two men must have been shot...
In all of my dealings with the Japanese, I have never seen anyone of our
chaps after they had been left with the Japs. Once you stopped—you
stopped for good.
Paginatan village is
approximately 42 km east
of Ranau on the road
back towards Sandakan.
In 1945 it was a
Japanese food dump and
POWs were forced to
carry rice between the
village and Ranau. A
number of men died or
were beaten to death on
these rice-carrying
parties. AWM 042511
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