Qualla: Sandakan Japanese Cemetery

Sandakan Japanese Cemetery: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The graves face the wrong way. In Japanese burial tradition, the deceased are typically oriented with their heads pointing north or west. But in the old cemetery on a hill two kilometers from Sandakan's town center, many of the women buried here have their feet pointing toward Japan. Whether this orientation was a deliberate final gesture of condemnation toward a homeland that sold them into exploitation, or simply an accident of geography, depends on whom you ask. What is not in dispute is who these women were: they were Karayuki-san, daughters of impoverished Japanese farming families who were sent overseas as young girls, ostensibly to work as maids, and then forced into prostitution in the brothels of colonial Southeast Asia.

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandakan Japanese Cemetery: The Okuni of the South Seas

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cemetery was founded in 1890 by Kinoshita Kuni, born on 7 July 1854 in Futae Village, Amakusa County, Kumamoto Prefecture. She managed what was known as Brothel No. 8 in Sandakan, and she was, by all accounts, an unusual figure in that grim industry. Fluent in English, she be...

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandakan Japanese Cemetery: Daughters of Poverty

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Karayuki-san came overwhelmingly from poverty-stricken agricultural prefectures in Japan, families of low social status who saw their daughters as economic instruments. The girls were sent overseas under the pretense of domestic service, then channeled into prostitution netwo...

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandakan Japanese Cemetery: Comfort Women and War

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The cemetery's population expanded during World War II, when the Japanese military's system of so-called "comfort women" -- women forced into sexual servitude for soldiers -- added another layer of exploitation to Sandakan's already troubled history. The women interred here durin...

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sandakan Japanese Cemetery: Feet Toward Japan

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Laura from Geneva, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0. The detail that draws visitors -- the orientation of the burials, feet toward Japan -- carries an emotional weight that transcends the question of intentionality. Even if the positioning was not a conscious act of defiance by the women or those who buried them, it has become one ...

Image: Laura from Geneva, Switzerland | CC BY 2.0