Qualla: Tawau Bell Tower

Tawau Bell Tower: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adznee Abas from Shah Alam, Malaysia, CC BY 2.0. The bell is gone. No one knows exactly when it vanished or where it went, but the tower that once held it still stands on a street corner in Tawau, pointing toward the Celebes Sea in one direction and the interior of Borneo in the other. Built in 1921, the Tawau Bell Tower is the oldest surviving structure in a town that has been bombed, burned, and rebuilt more than once. That it endures at all is something of a minor miracle - and something of a mystery, much like its missing bell.

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Image: Adznee Abas from Shah Alam, Malaysia | CC BY 2.0

Tawau Bell Tower: A Monument Between Allies

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1921, Japan and Great Britain were allies. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, first signed in 1902, had bound the two empires together through World War I, and the Japanese community in North Borneo's Tawau had prospered under British colonial administration. To commemorate the armi...

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

Tawau Bell Tower: The Vanishing Bell

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sometime before the tower fell into disrepair, its bell disappeared. The circumstances remain unclear - whether it was removed during the Japanese occupation, lost in the Allied bombing that razed much of Tawau in 1944, or simply taken by someone who saw an opportunity. Local leg...

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

Tawau Bell Tower: The Center of Everything

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Embedded in the tower is a surveyor's benchmark - the fixed point from which Tawau's elevation above sea level is measured and the starting distance to every other place in the district. It is, in the literal language of cartography, the center of Tawau. East from the tower runs ...

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

Tawau Bell Tower: Rescued by the Rotary Club

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2006, the Rotary Club of Tawau stepped in with funds to restore the tower before it could crumble entirely. The restoration preserved the structure that Japanese settlers had built as British subjects, that Japanese soldiers had overlooked as occupiers, and that Allied bombers...

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