The Witness
The Witness
- Author/Seller
- Tom Gilling
- SKU:
- 9781760879273
$35.00
The fighting had ended but for Sandakan's most notorious prisoner the war was not over.
At the Australian war crimes trials that followed World War II, one prosecution witness stood out: he was Sergeant-Major
Bill Sticpewich.
During Sticpewich's three years inside the infamous Sandakan POW camp, hundreds of Australians had died of
starvation, sickness and overwork. Others were shot or bayoneted by Japanese guards on brutal forced marches. Of
more than 2400 Allied prisoners at Sandakan, only six came home. It was Sticpewich's meticulous evidence that sent
Sandakan's sadistic commandant and his henchmen to the gallows.
But to his fellow prisoners Bill Sticpewich was not a war hero but a collaborator who avoided heavy labour and obtained
extra food by ingratiating himself with the Japanese.
Was Sticpewich a traitor or an opportunist or both? Drawing on wartime records, interviews and the recollections of
survivors, The Witness unravels the story of Sandakan's most notorious prisoner.
At the Australian war crimes trials that followed World War II, one prosecution witness stood out: he was Sergeant-Major
Bill Sticpewich.
During Sticpewich's three years inside the infamous Sandakan POW camp, hundreds of Australians had died of
starvation, sickness and overwork. Others were shot or bayoneted by Japanese guards on brutal forced marches. Of
more than 2400 Allied prisoners at Sandakan, only six came home. It was Sticpewich's meticulous evidence that sent
Sandakan's sadistic commandant and his henchmen to the gallows.
But to his fellow prisoners Bill Sticpewich was not a war hero but a collaborator who avoided heavy labour and obtained
extra food by ingratiating himself with the Japanese.
Was Sticpewich a traitor or an opportunist or both? Drawing on wartime records, interviews and the recollections of
survivors, The Witness unravels the story of Sandakan's most notorious prisoner.
