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Australia

George Daniel Conquit, was the youngest son of Evelyn Isabell Houghton Bain and her husband William Douglas Conquit. He served as a Signalman in the Australian Army.

George was born on 28 June 1920 in Wagga Wagga, NSW. He enlisted on 26 August 1940 at age 20 years – Service Number NX36653. After training he was sent to Singapore on 16 August 1941 as part of the 2/30th Battalion of the Australian Army’s 8th Division. The 8th Division was originally intended to be deployed to the Middle East but as war with Japan loomed, they were instead deployed to the Asia-Pacific region. The 2/30th Battalion was deployed to Malaya and fought against the Japanese during the Malaya Campaign and the Battle of Singapore. On 15 November 1941, George was transferred to the 8th Division Signals Unit.

On 26 March 1942 he was reported as “Missing” in Malaya. Notification that he was a Prisoner of War was not received until some eighteen months later on 17 November 1943. On 16 October 1944 he was reported as interred in a POW camp in Borneo. The Japanese surrender was signed on 14 August 1945 and on 28 August 1945 his service records were updated to show that he had died whilst a POW at the Sandakan POW Camp.

 The following information on Sandakan is taken from Wikipedia.

“After a large-scale military success during the Second World War, the Japanese had captured large numbers of Allied soldiers as a prisoners of war and distributed them to various lock-up facilities. In July 1942, the Japanese POW camps in Sandakan received about 1,500 Australians, most of them been captured from Singapore and brought here for the purpose of building a military airfield for the Japanese; this date is considered to be the beginning of the camp. In 1943, another 770 British and 500 Australian soldiers were sent to the camp. At the height of 1943, about 2,500 prisoners of war were located in the camp.

In October 1944, when the Japanese increasingly became defensive towards the end of the war, the airfield in Sandakan came under constant heavy bombing by the Allied forces. By January 1945, the damage was so great, and the Japanese no longer able to repair the runway, that on 10 January 1945 work on the airstrip was completely stopped. In the same month, a group of about 455 prisoners were sent on forced marches by the Japanese.

In May 1945, the Japanese finally decided to close the POW camp. Takakuwa Takuo took over command of the camp on 17 May. On 29 May, he ordered 536 prisoners to march to Ranau and then set the camp area on fire. Almost all records about the site were destroyed by fire. Other prisoners were marched into the jungle where they perished or were shot by the Japanese guards.

On 10 June 1945 a final group march of 75 prisoners towards Ranau was set in motion. The remaining prisoners who were stranded on the burned area either died of malnutrition and disease or were killed by the Japanese guards. By 15 August 1945, none of them remained alive

Only 6 men returned to Australia from Sandakan.”

George was one of those who never returned. George Daniel Conquit is one of 2,294 Commonwealth servicemen commemorated at the Labuan War Cemetery in Malaysia.

Labuan War Cemetery is on the island of Labuan in Brunei Bay off the coast of north-west Borneo. The Labuan Memorial commemorates the officers and men of the Australian Army and Air Force who died while prisoners of war in Borneo and the Philippines from 1942 to 1945 and have no known grave. It also commemorates the men of the local forces of North Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei who were killed on war service and who have no known grave.