Hickling was the first to write a about the incident after reading a report of the massacres in early 1950 at the Old Secretariat in Kuching. Having been sent to Sarawak to becomes assistant attorney general he arrived just after the assassination of the Governor Sir Duncan Stewart by local dissidents opposed to British Rule middle Rajang town of Sibu.

Ironically, almost the Sarawak victims were senior members of the Brooke government administration in Sibu. But half way through reading Long Nawang report with a view to write book on the event which had a macabre twist, he gave up. It was only 45 years later in 1995 that he eventually published a novel “Crimson Sun Over Borneo”, published by Pelanduk Publications in Kuala Lumpur.

In his preface Hickling explained why decided to write a novel instead revealing to the world a true but macabre story. He said: I wrote much, I read much, and for a time I wrote without difficulty. Yet always at the back of my mind was the massacre itself, and as the drew close to the event, I wrote more fitfully. “At last, …I could write no more”.

On why he wrote is novel, quoting Tacitus, he said; “In a text appropriate for any writer founding a story on fact…let no worthy act be un-commemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror of evil words and deeds.” Indeed, as he wrote “Man’s inhumanity to man is one thing, man’s inhumanity to the defenceless, to women and children, is even worse.

“To use children at play target practice for soldiers was yet another form of cruelty. The picture my reading gave me stayed in my mind, would not go away. I realised it could inly be exorcised by writing it out of my system Hickling’s novel sparked a series of events—my coincidental meeting in 1995 of a witness to the killing of two young children who were asked to climb a “pinang” palm tree only to be bayonetted when they slipped down.

The authoritative writer on Borneo Dr Bob Reece picked up my story which was used in his 1998 book “Masa Jepun; Sarawak under the JAPANESE 1941-1945” where he wrote a sub-section in an interview with Tedong anak Barieng, a relative of his Iban wife. Tedong, the brother of the late paramount chief Tun Temenggong Jugah, tried to dissuade the group from taking the journey to Kalimantan.

Other local writers touched on the subject books and articles; Books: Tom Harrisson “World Within” (1959), Hudson Southwell “Unchartered Waters” (1990), Gabriel Tan “Japanese occupation if Sarawak” (1997), Lim Beng Hai with Gabriel Tan: “Sarawak Under the Throes of War (2010), Ng Air Fern (the Star 2011) James Ritchie

Exploring Kalimantan—30 years ago and FINDING Closure to Borneo’s Worst War Crime

My first journey half way around Borneo, the world’s 3rd largest island--Kuching in the South West to Kalimantan’s easternmost cape of Tanjung Mangkalihat, was motivated by curiosity. Travelling by Boeing and Twin Otter by Malaysian Airlines to Tawau followed by a Missionary Aviation Fellow Cessna skippered by trainee American pilot, we viewed the vast expanse of the Sulawesi Sea as we landed on a school soccer pitch.

To enhance the last leg of our hour-long journey to the remote East Kalimantan province of Talisayan, was enhanced with a birds-eye view of the world-famous chain of exotic Derawan islands After flying across the Sulawesi Sea, ahead of us was a six-hour motor-cycle journey along the coast to meet Borneo’s last “cave-dwellers”. Unlike the pre-war war years of oil-rich Tarakan, it was more or less a shantytown far less developed than Tawau.

But still Tarakan was “civilization” for me because it had a jungle nine-hole golf course—the only evidence it was formerly a rich Dutch enclave. Our arrival was timely because Tarakan, a small island of the North-East coast of Borneo, was celebrating Independence Day on August 17, 1993. But independence had come with a price after the wholesale massacres of at least 40,000 Indonesians of all classes, races and religions in Kalimantan Barat alone.

After the fall of Japan in August 1945, President Sukarno declared the five-pronged “Pancasila” Kalimantan and a new beginning. After checking into a second-grade hotel, it was time to do a little exploring in the once infamous Dutch Indonesian oil town where some of the worst war crimes. As a former crime reporter my first instinct was to check out the Tarakan war memorial where nationalist of the 1960s Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation, were buried in a common graveyard.

Unlike Malaysia, “Makam Pahlawan” heroes graves, both Muslim and Christian Indonesian soldiers were buried side by side. Exploring the Tarakan graveyard, little did I know it had borne the remains of the 28 long-lost Sarawak senior civil servants and their spouses in a dastardly war crime described by commander of the Dutch forces in Kalimantan Brigadier General W.J.V. Windeyer as “one of the worst atrocities so far disclosed in Borneo”.

The Tarakan cemetery was also the temporary burial ground for another 40 Dutch soldiers who were massacred together with the Sarawakians by the Japanese in 1942. I would soon learn about the cruel massacres—perpetrated by two officers and 70 marines, had never been brough to book!

Among the Sarawak victims were the grandparents of at least two prominent families—assistant constabulary commissioner Desmond Vernon Murphy and prominent Scotsman John Andrew McPherson who had served as a judge in the Supreme Court, secretary of Native affairs. Murphy to a Kuching Javanese and McPherson to the daughter of a prominent Iban leader in Kapit.

I was familiar with one of McPherson’s grand-daughters Rukayah Sukri who was a part-time Radio Sarawak singer like me in the late 1960s. Her younger sister MP Datuk Nancy Shukri, delved into politics and first even served as Minister Prime Minister department in Kuala Lumpur. When I became the first Sarawak first NST correspondent in 1981, Nancy’s cousin Piruz Mcpherson worked an executive at our office.

On top of that, his younger brother Dato Anthony Bujang McPherson joined the NST group and rose to become Group CEO of NSTP Berhad between 2008 and 2012. I first stumbled on the Long Nawang massacres after a casual chat with Kenyah old timer Tusau Padan in Kuching.

Born In Apo Kayan in East Kalimantan, Tusau was 11 when he and his father witnessed the killing of five European women children, five children including a six-month-old infant who were shot, bayonetted and dumped into a shallow grave at the remote Belaga-Long Nawang border. Tusau’s tale seemed too far-fetched to believe until I related his story to fellow tribune reporter Melissa Murphy and she confirmed it was true!

Melissa’s family had been looking for their Irish forebear after he left Sibu on six-week long journey on the Rajang River across the border during the War. At the turn of the 21 century the story began to developed prompting Haji Mike to travel to Kalimantan to look for his father’s grave. After he arrived at Tarakan he discovered he was on wild goose chase exhumed twice, in 1950 and 1967, and reburied in at the Kumbang Kuning Heroes grave together with 5,000 Dutch soldiers.

Sadly, before Haji Mike could travel to Java, he died of a heart attack. As the story unraveled, I learnt that in 1923, a Dutch infantry company was established in Tarakan to protect the oil refineries and other production installations. In 1930, the Committee on the Defense of Oil Ports concluded that a permanent occupation of Tarakan by a larger than company-sized force was a necessity.

In 1933 with the clouds of war gathering, a “Reinforcement Detachment" from Java arrived to bolster Tarakan's defense. Japan had begun eyeing Tarakan which was producing about six million barrels of oil annually--which accounted for almost 20% of the total Japanese annual oil consumption. On January 12 1942, Japanese under commanders Shizuo Sakaguchi and Kyohei Yamamoto attacked Tarakan which had a contingent of 255 Dutch soldiers and civilian staff who agreed to cooperate.

According to a report the Japanese officers offered the Dutch an amnesty promising to treat them well if they surrendered but instead, 215 soldiers were tied up in batches and drowned But one detachment of 50 soldiers under Lt DJA Westerhuis managed to escape to the mainland and up the Kayan River heading for the remote Dutch outpost at Long Nawang—six-weeks journey away. Also in the entourage was Westerhuis Dutch wife and her child, a 2nd Lt, three sergeant majors, four sergeants, 1 cpl, administrative office staff, some civilians and 18 native soldiers who were all released.

On December 12, 2007 Melissa’s story was published in the Sarawak Tribune where I wrote: “For more than 60 years the circumstances of his death was a mystery until recently—thanks to the painstaking search of his grand-daughter Melissa Murphy. She discovered, sadly, that her grand-father had been one of 19 European men, women and children who had been massacred by the Japanese in the infamous Long Nawang incident in Dutch Borneo in 1942.”

To further pursue the story I wrote to Father Tom Obrien of the Catholic church on my interest circumstances that led to the killing of Father Feldbrudge, the Roman Catholic priest at Marudi. Feldbrudge had been involved in the rescued of four Dutch airmen whose aircraft was shot down at Marudi in Northern Sarawak in the early part of the second world war.

Note ------- According to the story on December 18, 1941 six Martin Bombers escorted by Brewstars Buffaloes left Dutch airbase at Sinkawang and headed for Miri. Lt Groenveldt’s plane was attacked by two Japanese sea planes while he was among four of the crew members who baled out. Later the JAPANESE DESTROYER “Shinoname” was sunk by a Dutch submarine at Tanjung Sipadan I wrote:

“A grand-daughter of one of the victims found a newspaper clipping which mentions a very interesting story of Father Joseph Leo Louis Marie Feldbrugge who was a Mill Hill priest who became a Parish priest in Marudi. “Father Felbrugge tried to save some Dutch pilots out of a crashed plane in near the Baram river.” "Three were dragged out but 2 died and were buried at the church.”

“When the Japs came, Father Feldbrudge and Marudi Resident Donald Hudden left Marudi and the four Dutch Airmen spent two weeks trekking from the Baram to Long Nawang. At Long Nawang a witness said that Father Feldbrudge, wearing his white 'sultana' and his red sashes, being led out into the open with the others. They had to dig the graves two big graves themselves.

On that Fateful Day on August 26, 1942 Reverend Felbrugge anm the four dutchmen he saved, were bayoneted and fell into the grave. Father was the last one to be killed. Looking back there are still many unanswered questions such as where are graves of Marudi’s fallen Dutch airmen!

On November 29, 2017 I flew to Long Nawang 2,500km in the heart of Borneo for the first time, to write the macabre and horrifying story that even acclaimed author Sarawak judge Hugh Hickling, could only fictionalize the details in his book “Crimson Sun over Borneo”. Till my search for answer ends, my crusade to honour Borneo’s forgotten heroes, will continue!