ery few sailing craft. There was no airfield in Tawau (or anywhere in Sabah). There was a small public hospital close to the shore but it had no medical officer. A medical doctor by the name of Ernst Sternfeld was sent from Sandakan to station in Tawau in 1939–1940, but lasted only a few months.
Shan Sui Golf and Country Club.
The Chinese community maintained schools. The Roman Catholic Church was later established in 1922 and provided the only English primary school. Mosques were unostentatious. The District Office was headed by a British expatriate District Officer and assisted by a chief clerk and court interpreter, Lim Ong Tun. OKK Abu Bakar (a local Malay leader) the second penghulu or OKK was another highly respected figure in the community. The Chinese "Kapitan" was Stephen Tan (who was later killed by Japanese invaders).
A letter from Tawau to Sandakan could take more than nine days to arrive and nineteen days was the average time for a letter to get to Singapore. Since it took many days for the locals to receive mails and newspapers, they tended to rely on radio to keep themselves informed of world news - for the wars in Europe, China etc. Even then, few people could afford a radio set.
In January 1942, North Borneo was invaded by Japanese naval and military forces. As the Japanese forces advanced around the coast of Borneo, from the oil fields near Kuching, then to Jesselton - while Tawau carried on normally. On 19 January 1942, the Sandakan wireless station went off the air. On 24 January 1942, the Japanese invaders were sighted off Batu Tinagat. The District Officer (Cole Adams) and his Assistant met the invaders at the wharf and were arrested immediately. Mr. Cole Adams, after forty-four months in the Japanese prison camps, first on Berhala Island near Sandakan, and then at Batu Lintang camp near Kuching, died in September 1945 on the very day of his release by the Australian 9th Division
