Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Sumpitan Onsi-Missing path history from The Death March Sandakan

Not much is known about the rebel group because most of their information is not recorded in history. However the author can get a bit of the origin of the information about this groups.

location and oil wells.

Borneo was the main target of the campaign Japanese war (1941-42) because of their wealth to the island's oil fields and strategic position to oppose the British in Malaya and the Dutch in Java. Japanese easily captured oil fields in Miri and Serian, Sarawak and Brunei without much resistance. Beginning next month, January 1942, Dutch oil wells in Tarakan and Balikpapan was in British control. By 1943 all the oil in Borneo has been used in the campaign war Japan.

Borneo Project

Borneo is a large island plus the density of the forest are still many untapped. Allies realize they lack the number of troops if trying to recapture the island of Borneo coupled with their superficial knowledge about the islands. Thus emerged the idea to send officers to the interior of Borneo Europe with the aim of preparing the population for rural guerrilla attacks against the enemy's main assets such as oil wells installation. The proposal is called "Borneo Project" finally paid for being a secret mission when taken over by the Australian Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD).

Under SRD Borneo implementation Project divided to 2 namely AGAS in Borneo North and SEMUT in Sarawak. SRD operation suffuses two major objectives namely gather information and arrange (including training and weaponry) local people become dissident groups which using guerilla tactic. SRD waw cover name for Special Operations Australia (SOA) that had moved out of the Allied Intelligence Bureau (AIB).

The term SOA was only to be used at the highest level. Under the restructure, SOA was virtually autonomous and came under the direct control of General Blamey, to whom it was answerable.
To further differentiate SOA personnel from those with other covert units, ‘secret numbers’ were introduced. The numbers were prefixed by letters to identify the role of the individual at a glance.
  1. AK:  Army/civilian operatives
  2. AKN: Naval personnel, including operatives
  3. AKR: Air Force personnel including operatives
  4. AKS: Signalers
  5. AKX: headquarters staff
  6. AKO: Ordnance staff
  7. AKV: Instructional or camp staff
  8. AKQ: Female staff
Sumpitan Onsi was are part from AK, main base was located on Sungai Sandakan. (will update later)