The Massacre of Maillé

I wonder if there is a site that has a listing for all of those massacre sites?

 

GOOGLING "ww2 atrocities" gave this site, for starters:

Massacres and Atrocities of WWII in Western Europe

 

Thank you Ron, this is a good start. In the mean time I have opened another thread about the Chateaubriand Massacre.

 

As was said, a horrible story but one that must be told. Thanks, Skipper for posting. Sometimes we all get caught in the big stories and forget that the stories of villages and isolated groups of people of individuals is also a major part of the story of the War. Anything that could bring justice or identification of those responsible should happen.

 

It has to be told. I personnaly heard of it a few years ago only and I live a few hours away from the place. These innocent civilians deserve to be remembered

 

Hi Ron, thank you Sir for the link for that site. I am impressed at the volume of info they have and will be visiting it again in the next few days.

Take care and best regards-Carl.

 

Its enough to turn your stomach!

 

Thanks for bringing this to us Skipper, it deserves our attention and the world's attention. So very sad.

 

I spent most of the afternoon reading the articles on the link Ron gave to George Duncan's Massacres and Atrocities of World War II. I was horrified and nauseated at what I read. Part of me wanted to stop by the end of the first page, but felt that not reading every article through page 4 would be disrespectful to the victims of man's inhumanity to man (and woman). I found this on page 4:

SANDAKAN DEATH MARCH (1945)

Sandakan, the prison compound in British North Borneo (now Sabah) held 2,434 Australian and British POW's, captured when Singapore fell. They were transported in a decrepit tramp steamer, the Yubi Maru, to Sandakan to help build a military airstrip for the Japanese. When their labour was no longer required, they were confined to the prison compound where they slowly died from starvation, disease and brutalities. As the Allies approached the islands, over 1,000 prisoners, still alive, were force marched in groups of 50 to another camp in the jungle near the village of Ranau, about 120 miles away. The 291 prisoners, including 288 stretcher cases, who were too sick to march and left behind at Sandakan, were massacred soon after, many dying after undergoing diabolical torture. In June, 1945, of the 455 prisoners that left Sandakan for Ranau on the first march, only 140 reached Ranau alive, the remainder had died or were shot during the march. Prisoners were shot out of hand, their bodies littering the route. On the second inhumane death march, 536 POW's left Sandakan but only 189 were still alive when they reached their destination, 142 of these were Australians.

Another march, the third, consisting of 75 prisoners and about 100 Japanese guards, left Sandakan on July 10 on the different northern route but none of the prisoners or guards arrived at Ranau. The mystery remains to this day. Did they all fall victim to the many hostile blowpipe tribes that inhabited the area? During their short stay at Ranau, four Australians managed to escape, another two escaped during the actual march, the rest were either shot or died from exhaustion, or illnesses such as malaria, beriberi, and dysentery. Of the six escapees, three died later and only three from the original 2,434 were alive to bear witness at the War Crimes Trials which followed at Rabaul and Tokyo in 1946 in which fourteen Japanese officers, convicted of war crimes in Borneo, were executed. (The last of the three escapees, Owen Campbell, died in Adelaide on July 3, 2003, aged 87) Captain Hoshijima Susumu, the Sandakan prison commandant was found guilty and hanged at Rabaul on April 6, 1946. Altogether, 1,381 Australian prisoners-of-war died at Sandakan in the most heinous atrocity of the Japanese against Australian troops in the entire Pacific war. Of the British prisoners, 641 had died. The 4,000 imported Javanese slave labourers who worked on the airstrip, less than half a dozen were alive at wars end yet their fate is hardly mentioned in history books. Only 25 Australians escaped from Japanese prison camps to come home again to their homeland. These escapes were from Borneo and Ambon. Around the same number escaped but were recaptured and executed. The number of deaths during the Sandakan marches were four times greater than the Americans who died during the Bataan death marches.

Today, the Sandakan War Memorial Park, with its two Australian memorials, is beautifully laid out on the former site of the notorious prison camp.

OPERATION 'KINGFISHER'

The code name for the rescue operation planned to liberate the Australian and British prisoners of war confined at Sandakan. In the planning stage for months under the direction of Australian General Sir Thomas Blamey and the Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) the operation was bungled from the start owing to ineptitude, incompetence, petty jealousies and lack of decision making. The egosticistical US General Douglas MacArthur (not very popular in Australia) nevertheless gave it his unqualified support, but history has wrongly blamed MacArthur who became the scapegoat for Kingfisher's failure. Blamey stated that aircraft and ships were not available for the rescue operation, that MacArthur needed them for 'other purposes' (no doubt, the proposed invasion of Japan). After thirty years the Kingfisher files were released for public access. They show that the RAAF had a pool of around 40 Dakota DC-3s and B24 Liberators in hand and that only 30 were needed for the paratroop assault on Sandakan for which 800 paratroops had trained in the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. (although they were never told for what purpose) After months of planning, the rescue operation never took place and so, 2,428 Australian and British POW's...died.
When the war ended, 14,526 Australian POW's were liberated from Japanese prison camps. The Allied occupation of Japan formally ended on September 8, 1951.

My mother's cousin was the only son of a disabled British World War I Veteran. Bertie was on a British ship docked in Australia when World War II began. He left the ship and joined the Australian Forces. He died either at Sandakan or on the Sandakan Death March.

 

I know the feeling . I had this when I walked through the streets of Oradour. The place is just like it was after the destruction by the Nazis in 1944. It's a deadly silent memorial. Nobody in the streets now, but the charcoal still ont the walls, the doctor's car still in a garage, the postoffice sign still on the wall. From time to time a sign told me to pay respect to burnt women and children at the very place I was standing. I felt uneasy but I wanted to see it and know what happened. I hope people will never forget this horrible Massacre either.

 

Skipper

I am convinced that sites where evil acts were performed permanently carry an aura of bestality and this can be felt by persons of sensitivity.

When I visited Rome shortly after its fall in June '44 I experienced the same sort of feeling, as I recorded below.

" We had been dropped off at a lorry park near the Colosseum and so this was an obvious starting point. I followed the early crowds into the amphitheatre and tagged on to a group that had managed to secure the services of an Italian guide. After a short while I slipped away to visit the cells underneath the arena where the slaves and early Christians were held prior to the games and their subsequent death. I have never considered myself to be significantly claustrophobic but the atmosphere in the dank, shaded quarters felt unbearably evil, and I was glad to get back out into the sun and the heat."

Cheers

Ron

 

You perfectly understood me and underwent the same uncomfortable feeling I experienced Ron. Silence emphasized everything.

 

I know lots of you will know about the German SS massacre of the village of Oradour sur Glane, but how many will know of a smaller scale, but no less harrowing slaughter that occurred not far from here, at Maillé, 40kms south of Tours in the Loire Valley?

Here's a link to more info.

 

Very sad
It's interesting how you'd think that these sort of atrocities were reserved to the east...but they were not. Just makes you wonder what else might have happened.

 

Sad indeed. It's often brought home to me, the brutality of war, simply living as I do here in France - a once occupied territory. There are stories like this littered around the place, brutal shootings of suspected resistence fighters here & there. Scars on a farmhouse wall, said to be bullet holes where someone was executed. It's different here, and I guess until you spend some time in the heartlands, with these stories, you never really understand, or sympathise with much of what the French, Belgians, Dutch etc. went through.

 

Thanks for this le Chant, but we have already several threads mentionning this massacre and one specifically for Maillé. May I humbly suggest you use our search section to avoid posting threads about the same subject twice.
http://www.ww2f.com/wwii-today/24514-massacre-maill.html

 

Skipper - once again, my apologies. I'll shut up.

 

Please don't shut up! I certainly hope you continue to post. The trick is in learning how to use the Search feature provided with the Forum, and you can always post on a thread about a topic that interests you regardless of how long ago it was started.

As you state it is horrific to learn about the many injustices and horrific acts which were committed in the occupied countries.

 

By all means keep coming up with the useful postings, it is just easier to use existing threads that make the search for our members more convenient too. And no apologies are needed.

In fact I will merge the Mailly threads.