Massacre of Mandor

The Mandor Massacre was an event that took place in 1943 and 1944 during the Second World War in the present Indonesian province of West Kalimantan during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies . The victims came from various ethnic groups and devastated the Malayan elite of the province, including Sultan Sjarif Muhammad Alkadrie and Sambas Sultan Muhammad Ibrahim Sjafiuddin. Vice Admiral Tadashige Daigo was sentenced to death in 1947 for this massacre.

The monument “Juang Mandor”

When the Allies landed at Kalimantan in 1945, they collected the remains of the victims who were scattered in the forest and buried them in mass graves covered by open wooden shelters. The place is fenced and simply indicated by a sign bearing the mention “Location of the massacre” in Indonesian .

In 1975, President Soeharto’s government erected a larger memorial, visible from the road. A sculptor from Bandung is commissioned to make a bas-relief illustrating the atrocities. The inscription indicates only the mention “Common pit”, without specifying the causes. JF Caloh, from Panca Bhakti Private University in Pontianak , the provincial capital, is convinced that a group of Japanese tourists saw the sign and protested to the authorities, and that it was the governor who ordered the change ¹ .

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