Sandakan Japanese Cemetery
Sandakan Japanese Cemetery is an old graveyard in Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia. Located on a hill about 2 kilometres from the town's central business district, it is a cemetery where the remains are buried of many Japanese female prostitutes called Karayuki-san from poverty-stricken agricultural prefectures in Japan who were sold into slavery at a very young age years before World War II which also include recent comfort women during the war. It is part of the Sandakan Heritage Trail.
History
The cemetery was founded in 1890 by Madam Kinoshita Kuni from Futae Village, Amakusa County, Kumamoto Prefecture, a successful Japanese female manager of Sandakan's lucrative 'Brothel No. 8' for Japanese prostitutes who died in the town. Madam Okuni was a very influential woman who was fluent in English. Many Yamato nadeshiko sought her guidance and protection as the treatment of the girls in her brothel was much better than in the other Japanese brothels in Sandakan,where she was called the "Okuni" of South Seas. She was raised in a poor family before becoming the mistress of an Englishman in Yokohama at a young age. When her husband returned to England, she moved to Sandakan and opened a general store and a brothel.In 1891, there were already 20 brothels and 71 Japanese prostitutes in Sandakan. The cemetery built by Okuni is meant for the souls of Japanese who died in Sandakan. She herself had a place reserved in the cemetery, when she was still alive; showing that she intended to live permanently in Sandakan and did not want to return to Japan. All of the grave stones in the cemetery were directly ordered from her homeland. The cemetery subsequently become famous among Japanese visitors, including those from Jesselton and Tawau as they would stop at the cemetery to pray for the deceased before continuing on their journeys. A book published in 1972 by Japanese writer Tomoko Yamazaki mentioned that the cemetery used to have hundreds Japanese graves. The cemetery also has a monument erected in 1989 for fallen Japanese soldiers from World War II as an addition.