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By May 1945 only about thirty prisoners remained alive at Ranau. Two men, Privates Richard Murray and Keith Botterill, stole rice from the Japanese to build up food stocks for an escape. When the theft was discovered, Murray stepped forward to take responsibility, knowing that he would be killed. He was bayonetted and his body thrown into a bomb crater at Ranau on 20 May 1945. He is buried in Labuan war cemetery. Murray sacrificed his life to save his mate, Keith Botterill, who became one of the six survivors of the Sandakan death march -------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- Rod Wells The interviewer produced a small piece of wood like a meat skewer, pushed that into my left ear, and tapped it in with a small hammer. I think I fainted some time after it went through the drum. I remember the last excruciating sort of pain, and I must have gone out for some time because I was revived with a bucket of water. Eventually it healed but of course I couldn’t hear with it. I have never been able to hear since. Lieutenant Rod Wells, describing torture by the Kenpeitai in Sandakan, 1943 Lieutenant Rod Wells, a 23-year-old school teacher, helped Lionel Matthews build a radio at Sandakan. Matthews and Wells were arrested and interrogated by the Kenpeitai, the Japanese secret police. After four months of brutal interrogation, Wells and eighteen others were sent to the notorious Outram Road Gaol in Singapore. Though subjected to a ferocious regime of starvation and beatings, Wells survived; however, almost all the men he had known in Sandakan perished in the death marches.
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