concluded in 1947, were released to the relevant government agencies to be sealed for a minimum of 30 years. It is worth noting that there are some that attribute this withholding of information as an attempt to conceal the military's lack of intervention in this matter both in regards to the relative failure of the Singapore campaign and the abandonment of Project Kingfisher. Although these allegations have not been confirmed. Very little information was released to the public in the time between this sealing and the eventual upsurge of the narratives in the 1980s. While some books pertaining to the movements of these units during the war were released earlier, these did not pertain to the time that these units spent in captivity. Family members attempting to gain information from 1945 to the unsealing of these documents were presented with very little information, usually only being provided a confirmation of death. British families found gathering this information particularly difficult. It wasn't until the efforts of investigators, historians and soldiers brought these narratives to light in the 1980s and 1990s that Sandakan entered the public consciousness again and, for many families this was their first exposure to a full account of what happened to their relatives. POW route The "POW Route" during the three death marches series was documented in 1945 by British and Australian military. The route begins in Sandakan and ends at the "Last Camp" at Ranau. The stations of the route are now marked with a sign board. Since 2005, the route of the track became a heated dispute between two Australian war historian Dr Kevin Smith and Lynette Silver. Dr Smith claimed that at Telupid, the track veered to the right towards Miruru via the Liwagu Valley but Lynette argued that it never went to Miruru according to the hand-drawn map found by the Australian Body Recovery team of the Office of Australian War Graves and later audited in 2012 by the Australian Army History and Mapping units. The argument was set to rest as Lynette's evidence was supported by two of the last remaining trail cutters, Tuaty Akau and Zudin, who lived at the time to establish the route under forced labour for the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) as well witnessing the horror of the death march. Both these witnesses have since died; Zudin on 14 May 2017 from breathing difficulties at the age of 87,