In 1947, after RAF aircrew service, I was accepted into the Civil Aviation Branch of
the Colonial Service as an Air Traffic Control Officer at Lydda Airport, Palestine
where I remained until the mandate ended. Thereafter I undertook duties in Singapore,
Sarawak and North Borneo. As with most other branches of the Colonial Service, we
trained local staff to take over, in the fullness of time, our respective duties. However, in
the case of the two latter countries, our department carried out airfield and airstrip
surveys for overall and financial development and to facilitate travel more rapidly and
conveniently than by river and jungle track.
Thus it was that in July 1958 as Operations Officer, North Borneo, I found myself
leaving the capital, Jesselton (now Kota Kinabalu), by air in a de Havilland Rapide for
Keningau in the interior, almost due south of Jesselton. The object of the exercise was to
find suitable airstrip sites at or around Sepulot (Sepulut) and Pensiangan, the latter being adjacent
to the Indonesian border.
The travelling time from Keningau would be five days to Sepulot and another two to
Pensiangan, carried out on foot, by pony and on river by prahu. On the fifth day from
Keningau, on turning a bend in the track, Sepulot appeared ahead standing above the
confluence of the Talankai and Sepulot rivers which flow on to become the Longonan. It was a nice village, typical of what most people envisage when they think of a village
deep in the jungle by the banks of a river abundant with fish.
A jambatan or sway bridge
connected the village with the
far bank and to the left of the
bridge was a fence surrounding
a rock cairn in the middle of
which in an upright position
was a .5 calibre machine gun
from an aircraft. At one end of
the cairn was a wooden cross.
This had been the grave of
three American airmen who
were killed in the latter stages
of the war when they were
bombing oil tanks at Brunei.
On talking with the headman
and villagers at Sepulot and
later at Pensiangan, I could
only gather that the aircraft
described was a Flying Fortress
(in their words, “sa’ekor dan
empat kepas” - one tail and
four engines). It had been hit
by anti-aircraft fire, then
crashed and burnt near the
village of Ta’ Tabunan on the
Talankai river. I was told that
three of the crew were killed,
whether due to the accident or
before could not be said. Five
other crew bailed out before the
crash. (I am not certain how
these numbers correlate to the
full Flying Fortress complement.) Three landed near Sepulot, one was brought to Sepulot
the next day and the following night one who had drifted down near Pandewan village
was brought in by the local headman. The first three were kept and hidden by the native
Muruts in the small courthouse and the other two were kept in the school further up
the hill.
On the third day after the crash three of the crew went out to stretch their legs near the
bridge by the river. They saw and were seen by a Japanese patrol who were aware of an
aircraft having been hit. Both lots opened fire but the Americans only had pistols for
which the range across the river was too great. They were killed. The other two who
heard the firing escaped into the jungle, but unaware of jungle survival techniques were
unable to exist and hunger drove them to surrender to the Japs who sent them to
Keningau and later to Beaufort, one of their headquarters near the coast. What happened
to them is not known. The Japs ordered the Muruts to take the heads of the three who had been killed and said that they were the common enemy. The bodies were buried in a
grave by the bridge and the heads were sent to Pensiangan.
Before I set off on this trip, I read some archival material by a government District
Officer, one Maxwell Hall, pertaining to this area. He had written in flowing terms an
account of this incident and how Colonel Hill, the Head of the Civil Administration of the Liberation Forces, on finding out about the heads had
ordered them to be returned to
Sepulot, where they were
buried with the bodies in the
grave. (I should perhaps add
that the Murut had been
headhunters of yore.) Quite some time after the surrender,
about 1951, American
authorities removed the bodies
to their homeland.
Maxwell Hall said that
whilst in the Pensiangan area
Colonel Hill gathered the
native chiefs and in order of
seniority all knelt and took an
oath of allegiance to the
Crown. To mark the occasion a
stone was inscribed -
“TAMPAT BERSUMPAH”
and it was placed high above
the flood water level on the
banks of the Sungai Sibangali.
Hall also said that in all his
travels in the interior he had
never come across the
Sibangali so had never seen the
stone and inscription. (Tampat
or Tempat in Malay means
“Place”; Bersumpah means
“Taking an Oath”).
One day we were paddling upriver beyond Pensiangan when I noticed a tributary
coming in from the left and asked the jaragon (head boatman) if he knew its name. Back
came the answer, “Sibangali, Tuan”. I almost fell out of the prahu and asked him to turn
into it. When we stopped on the bank I queried him about the '"Tampat Bersumpah". He
knew of it and said that the place was so remote and isolated that people hardly went
there so the stone had been removed to Pensiangan and now stood in front of the little
courthouse! On our return to Pensiangan I found the stone overgrown with grass which I
then had cut. The inscription had weathered a bit so I went over it in white chalk before
taking a photograph. I wonder if it stands there still as a memorial to past British rule.
The results of my surveys for the prospective airstrip sites were submitted to the
Secretariat for consideration on my return to Jesselton.
Later accounts of these events offer some different details. Maxwell Hall’s material
stated “as far as the Murut chiefs were concerned paramount amongst them all was one
Pamiang whose name long deserves to be remembered in the annals of the history of
North Borneo”. When I arrived in Pensiangan I spoke with some of the headmen and
asked if they had taken the oath at the Tampat Bersumpah. They all replied in the
negative and said that at that time they were in the jungle fighting the Japs. Further
questioning revealed that the oldest remaining men had been lined up in alphabetical
order to take the oath and that Pamiang, who was a police corporal and knew them all by
name, had arranged this and obviously gave himself a lift in the hierarchy at the same
time.
Tom Harrisson was a Major in the Green Howards when he was inducted into Z
Special Unit to be parachuted in 1944 into Borneo in command of Operation Semut
(semut is Malay for ‘ant’). He was literally on the spot, and he gave his version of the
events in his book World Within - a Borneo Story (Oxford University Press 1959). Tom
arrived in Borneo the day after the crash and his comments suggest that the aircraft was a
Liberator (twin fin and rudder and four engines) which was shot down by a single
Japanese fighter. Three extracts from his book are as follows:
P241 “Some of these (Americans) were survivors of the same plane which
had been shot down the day before my own first flight over Borneo. The
American plane which had first taught me the splendour of Batu Lawi, shown
the first glinting hope of a hole in the jungle far inland, had been from the
same Navy squadron, searching for these very boys. Their plane had crash landed
just behind Brunei Bay in a swamp. This highly armed bomber had
been shot down by a single Japanese fighter, out of the blue. The pilot, a
naval lieutenant-commander, staggered out (they said) into the swamp
declaiming: “Gee, I didn’t know the Japs were that good”.
The crew could not agree on the best thing to do. So they split up. Four
headed inland and got into the Murut-Kelabit country on the Trusan in north
Sarawak after great tribulations. The Japanese were hunting them, at times
hot on the trail. But the Trusan people, although anxious to pass them on and
away as quickly as possible, fed and led them further and further inland,
never gave them away. Several Sarawak Muruts were brought down to the
coast and interrogated by the Japanese on this account. At least three of these
were cruelly put to death by torture, without giving their own people or the
Americans away. This Trusan-American party continued up from village to
village, ‘very very slowly’, mostly hiding out in the jungle. By early 1945
they were scattered about in the remoter valleys of the interior, where the
people continued to look after them as best they could, individually, at
enormous risk.
The other half of this crew unhappily elected to cross north-east from the
Trusan in Sarawak over the Crocker Range into the Padas river valley in the
territory of North Borneo. Here, before very long, they were betrayed by the
Tagal people, who sold them to the Japanese. As well as the reward, the
Tagals were allowed to keep their heads.”
P262 “We already knew that the Tagal alone had betrayed some American
airman where all other people had protected them, even with hardship and
danger to themselves.”
P330 “In the Official War History volume Military Administration in the Far
East, by F S V Donnison (HM Stationery Office, 1956) it is stated (p184) that
Japanese forces in the Upper Trusan surrendered on November 8, 1945. The
British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit (BBCAU) then established ‘a simple form
of administration even in this remote area’. This simple form can only have
been me? Later I am referred to by name (p 192) as taking a prominent part
inland, in civil affairs, along with Lt Col G P Hill. Between us, ‘a more
ambitious administration was established than the area had known before the
war’. I cannot conceive, though, who Col Hill was. Surely I cannot have
become so irreparably ‘Z’ as to develop dual personality and draw double
pay?”
My accounts were derived personally from discussions with ketuas (headmen) and
others at Sepulot and Pensiangan, as, I imagine, were those of Maxwell Hall. Tom
Harrisson’s account was from a different standpoint. Who knows which presentation is
the more accurate?
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