3 JANUARY 1942—a detachment from Japanese-controlled Labuan landed and captured the village of Mempakul, North Borneo, just outside the town of Menumbuk. Two weeks before that, Sibu and Brunei were captured by Japanese naval forces at the very start of the Japanese Borneo Campaign. As Japanese troops marched north towards Jesselton (modern-day Kota Kinabalu), the army garrison there quickly negotiated the surrender of the city to the Japanese. By 8 January, large portions of Sabah’s West Coast had been captured.

The British North Borneo Company (BNBC), founded as the North Borneo Provisional Authority Limited in 1881 by Albert Dent, was the authority administering the North Borneo territories (modern-day Sabah) between 1881 and 1942. A British private charter company ruled over Sabah after taking over the territorial concessions from Gustav Overbeck and the American Trading Company of Borneo. Sabah was then considered a colony and protectorate of the UK, relying on the Royal Navy for defense, and only maintained a paramilitary police force, the North Borneo Armed Constabulary, consisting of only 650 men. BNBC based its seat of government in the northern city of Kudat, before moving it to Sandakan. Jesselton was only made the capital of North Borneo in 1946 after the latter became a crown colony.

On 17 January 1942, the Japanese navy invaded and captured the city of Sandakan. With the loss of the capital, North Borneo was surrendered, and was occupied by the Japanese for 3 years and 8 months.

The Japanese occupation of Sabah was brutal, stained with mass exploitation, forced labour, collective punishment, massacres and reprisal killings. Multiple prisoners-of-war (POW) camps were established across Borneo, such as the Batu Litang camp in Kuching, the Sandakan camp, and smaller ones such as the 300-prisoner Labuan camp. The camps were used to detain captured soldiers from across Borneo and Malaya.

Though the Japanese kept Malay civil servants in the bureaucracy whilst interning former British administrators in POW camps, all ethnicities in Sabah—the indigenous, Chinese and Malay, were subjected to Japanese brutality and cruelty. The Chinese, particularly the urbanites among them, were subjected to economic expropriation, constant surveillance, and sometimes, brutal force and torture by the Kempeitai (Japanese military police), due to their sympathies for the Guomindang party that ruled the Republic of China and made up the government when the Sino-Japanese War began in 1937.

All ethnicities in North Borneo were subjected to Nipponisation; they were forced to adopt the Japanese language, culture and customs. Schoolchildren sang the Kimigayo (the Japanese anthem) before each class, and had to learn Nihongo (the Japanese language). Japanese newspapers were translated into Malay, and printed and distributed throughout Borneo.

Albert Kwok and the Kinabalu Guerrillas

The oppression experienced by local communities was untenable, leading to the rise of resistance amongst the local people. Chief amongst them were the Kinabalu Guerrillas, led by Albert Kwok.

Kwok was born in Kuching, Sarawak in 1921 and was medically trained in the Chinese Red Cross as a traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Shanghai, Nanking, Hankou and Canton. As the war worsened on the mainland, he returned to Borneo in 1940 and worked in Jesselton as a doctor. In 1941, at age 19, he decided to resist the Japanese occupation when a Japanese decree was circulated, threatening Chinese residents against showing any non-compliance.

In April 1943, he contacted the Filipino-United States resistance fighters, hoping to procure arms and supplies for a rebellion. Returning to Jesselton a month later, he contacted the Chinese National Salvation Association, a Menggatal branch of the Overseas Chinese Defense Association (OCDA), to procure medical equipment and donations for the Filipino resistance fighters. During his second visit, he received training from the remnants of the Filipino-United States Forces and was appointed a Lieutenant. Working with business people like Lim Keng Fatt, the former chong khiam (leader or organiser) of the China Relief Fund, members of the North Borneo Volunteer Force (NBVF) like Li Tet Phui and Jules Stephens, and former members of the Armed Constabulary like Chief Police Officer of Jesselton, he formed the Kinabalu Guerrillas to struggle for the liberation of North Borneo.

On the eve of the 32nd Chinese National Day on 9 October 1943, the Kinabalu Guerrillas rose up against the Japanese from their base in Menggatal. From there, they went on to fight the Kempeitai at their headquarters in Tuaran and in Jesselton. The resistance fighters captured Japanese positions from as far north as Kota Belud to as far south as Papar. Even without arms and supplies from the Filipino resistance fighters, the resourceful fighters fought with parang, keris and bajak.

Accounts say that after capturing Jesselton, the guerrillas raised the British Union Jack and the Chinese “Blue Sky, White Sun and a Wholly Red Earth” flag, as members from the NBVF are largely loyal to the British and OCDA are largely loyal to the Chinese. The OCDA members of the Kinabalu Guerrillas also took the opportunity to celebrate the birthday of Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary who founded the Republic of China (ROC), by hoisting the national flag and its national anthem.

The uprising orchestrated by the Kinabalu Guerrillas was not just the work of Chinese and former colonial fighters. The group consisted only of 100 Chinese fighters, with another 200 being indigenous peoples. It also enjoyed the support of nearby indigenous villages. All in all, 47 Japanese military and civilian personnel met their end during the uprising. The guerrillas, however, continued to hide in the hills of Menggatal and Penampang, only surrendering on 19 January 1944 after the Japanese threatened to massacre 400 civilians in the Shantung Valley, near what is modern-day Bundusan, Penampang.

Losing control of Jesselton and having their occupying forces killed infuriated the Japanese. They thus led a large series of reprisal killings on the west coast of North Borneo, even after the surrender and execution of fighters from the Kinabalu Guerrillas. Most famous of these reprisal killings were their massacres on Matanani Island in February 1944, where they captured the Suluk men and killed Suluk women and children after failing to locate a Chinese guerrilla reportedly in the area, leading to the island’s population falling by 75%. They reportedly machine-gunned entire villages from as far north as Kota Belud to as far south as Membakut; 2,000 to 4,000 civilians died, most of whom were of Bajau and Suluk descent.

Many captured fighters were transported overnight to Petagas, Putatan, and forced to sign statements of guilt which they weren’t allowed to read before being gunned down. Albert Kwok, Kong Tze Phui, Li Tet Phui, Charles Peter and Tsen Tsau Kong were beheaded and buried in a mass grave in Petagas. The site of the massacre is now the Petagas War Memorial site. One third of the fighters escaped execution, and were interned in Labuan under brutal conditions and put to work on public work projects. Only seven guerrillas survived the labour camp to see the end of World War II. 324 fighters lost their lives.

The Sandakan Death March

The Japanese became increasingly brutal in order to deter further uprisings. During the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or the Tokyo War Crime Trials, the Kempeitai were found to be responsible for a reign of terror that saw the arrest, torture and massacre of innocent civilians and the depopulation of the coastal areas of their Suluk population.

Many captured POWs from former British administrations were sent to North Borneo. The most notable camp at the time was in Sandakan, where British and Australian POWs captured from the Battle of Singapore were placed. In 1945, Allied forces were slowly recapturing territories from the Japanese. By January 1945, the Japanese military command feared that the Allies would soon recapture Sandakan and released the interned POWs back into Allied ranks. POWs are also crucial bargaining chips during peace settlements. They were also forced labourers used to build infrastructure like the Sandakan Airport.

In retaliation, the Japanese military forced the POWs to march from the east coast of Sandakan inland to the town of Kundasang, Ranau, situated at the foothills of Mount Kinabalu. This march inland saw the demise of 2,434 Australian and British POWs who had been subjected to starvation and brutality by the Japanese forces. They were forced to traverse 260km through the Bornean rainforests. Only 38 survived the march by the end of July 1945; most were very ill and were unwell to do any work.

The Japanese fear of naval invasion by the Allied Forces came true on June 1945. US and Australian forces landed on Labuan and Brunei Bay. Most of the fighting was concentrated in Labuan and around the town of Beaufort. When the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945, only six POWs from the Sandakan Camp were found to be alive. A memorial stands in Sandakan today, located at the original site of the POW camp next to the airport. A war memorial memorialising the Sandakan Death March is erected in Kundasang, at the final location of the POW march.

Despite the replacement of the Jesselton Uprising Remembrance Day from 2 January to Hari Pahlawan on 31 July after Sabah joined Malaysia in 1963, the anniversary of the Kinabalu Guerrilla’s unfair execution is still remembered as the day Sabahans of all ethnicities fought back against their oppressors. Even in peacetime, the sacrifices of those who resisted must be remembered; they served to foster unity against possible future conflict and connect us to our local history.

REFERENCES

1. Evans, S. R. (2007). Sabah: Under the Rising Sun Government. Opus Publications. (Original work published 1999)

2. Hall, M. (1963). Kinabalu Guerrillas - An Account of the Double Tenth Rising against the Japanese Invaders in North Borneo. (Original work published 1949)

3. Ham, P. (2012). Sandakan: The untold story of the Sandakan Death Marches. Random House Australia.

4. Kratoska, P. H. (2013). Southeast Asian Minorities in the Wartime Japanese Empire. Routledge.

5. Wong, D. (2004). Historical Sabah: The Chinese. Natural History Publications (Borneo).

6. Wong, D. (2007). The Petagas War Memorial and the Creation of a Heroic Past in Sabah. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 80(2 (293)), 19–32. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/41493694