5. The Sandakan Death Marches (1945)
In the final months of World War II, Australian and British POWs in Borneo were forced by their Japanese captors to endure the infamous Sandakan Death Marches. Prisoners struggled through dense jungle and mountainous terrain with almost no food or medical care. Out of about 2,400 men, only six survived—the rest succumbed to starvation, disease, and merciless brutality. This atrocity remains one of the darkest episodes of POW suffering in the Pacific theater. Australian War Memorial
