A brief message from the managers of DiscoverTawau.com

“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.” – Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), Pro Publio Sestio.

If you have been visiting this website, you must have read a lot of historical articles about Tawau. As written in the quote above, we aim to document Tawau’s history as much as possible and make it easily accessible for everyone – and for future generations. When Daniel and I grew up in Tawau, we knew very little about Tawau’s history until we did our research at the local library, talking to senior citizens in Tawau and found online articles written by people from overseas.

We do hope that you will continue supporting and visiting this website. As always, if you have any information, news, articles or photos about Tawau that you wish to share and contribute, please contact us.

Japanese Occupation of Tawau in 1942

Before the 1900’s, the Japanese were already in Tawau venturing into agriculture, timber and fishing business. By the 1930’s, the 2 big “giants” operating in Tawau were Kuhara (Nissan) and Kubota (Mitsubishi) according to this article. These two names still exist in Tawau until today.

Nissan Estates

The attacks on Sabah begun on 1st January 1942 in Labuan (Victoria) followed by Membakut and Beaufort. A week later Kota Kinabalu (Jesselton) was captured followed by Sandakan (Elopura). Tawau was occupied on 24th January 1942. The photo below shows Japanese armies delivering speech to the local people, declaring Tawau is occupied.

Tawau occupied by the Japanese on January 24, 1942

During the Japanese occupation, the local currency was replaced with an “Emergency” notes which were called the Nissan Rubber Estate Issues. This was used in Tawau district only. We stumbled upon this website which has samples of the paper money. We are also in touch with Mr. Neumann from Australia who has a collection of this currency which he plans to scan and share with us soon.

A one dollar note

Tawau was under the Japanese occupation for 3.5 years but finally liberated by units of North Australian Division. Eventually, the Japanese in Tawau were repatriated to their homeland.

Japanese people headign towards the jetty; being repatriated to their homeland.

The photo below was contributed by the Australian War Memorial, showing a Japanese soldier. Take note of the Bell Tower in the background.

Identification of a suspected war criminal, Y. Nagata (Courtesy of Sgt F. A. C. Burke via Australian War Memorial)

We will leave this article open for now and shall update it as we receive more materials from our contributors.