White rows
Thousands of headstones on the lawns.
Calistemon — CC BY-SA 4.0 · CEphoto, Uwe Aranas — CC BY-SA 3.0
One of the largest Second World War cemeteries in Malaysia, cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, holding thousands of graves of Allied servicemen from Australia, Britain, India and elsewhere, many of whom fell in the Japanese invasion of Borneo and in the Borneo campaign of 1945. After the war the remains of many prisoners who died in Japanese captivity were moved here, among them victims of the Sandakan death marches and hundreds of prisoners who died at Batu Lintang camp near Kuching; most could not be identified, so their headstones carry the words Known unto God. Rows of white headstones stretch across wide lawns ringed by a low wall and trees, with a memorial to the missing at the centre. The place is quiet and solemn; entry is free and it is open in the daytime. It lies near the airport a few minutes from the town centre, and at the other end of the island is the Peace Park at Layang-Layangan, where the surrender of Japanese forces in Borneo took place in 1945, so combine the two on a tour of wartime memory.
Thousands of headstones on the lawns.
Victims of Sandakan and Batu Lintang.
Names of those with no grave.
Near Labuan airport, a few minutes from the town centre
A memorial garden at Layang-Layangan in the north of the island, where Japanese forces in Borneo surrendered in 1945, with monuments calling for peace. It is about a quarter of an hour's drive from the cemetery.
