By the time the button and other relics were buried 63 years ago, the burial party would have harboured no hopes of survival, or rescue, or of anyone in the outside world knowing where they were. They knew that people who came to this remote place were doomed to die. This place was the last camp. So the dying soldiers buried these artefacts, the only non-perishable things they owned, in the hope that someone, one day, would know that Australians had been there, eight kilometres south of Ranau.

A few months earlier in 1945, the Japanese high command had ordered that no prisoners survive the war. With Allied forces nearing Sandakan, the Japanese ordered prisoners to march 265 kilometres to Ranau. Of 2434 Australian and British prisoners in Sandakan, only six survived - 1787 Australians and 641 British perished in the camp, along the track or at Ranau. The last were executed on August 27, 12 days after World War II ended. Now the owner of the land on which the relics were discovered, with the help of Ms Silver, the foremost authority on the Sandakan tragedy, is planning to preserve the site. He will build a community facility with the artefacts in special pavilions. Private Keith Botterill, one of the six survivors, had told Ms Silver before he died of conditions at the last camp. Botterill, who had been on the first of two death marches, saw a line of 183 shambling, emaciated figures from the second march enter the camp site on June 26, 1945. These men were the last of 536 who had left Sandakan a month before.

The men were dying by the dozen, from dysentery, malaria, beriberi, overwork and terrible beatings. At the end of July, only 32 were still alive; on August 1, 17 were carried or forced to crawl to the POW cemetery and murdered. The final 15 were all killed on August 27. In 1995, Ms Silver located the POW sites along the route, and visited all but one in 1999.

Early this year, her trekking colleague, Tham Yau Kong, met the landowner where the last camp was situated, Dr Othman Minudin, who agreed with Ms Silver that the site was uncontaminated by modern-day living. Ms Silver and her husband, Neil, spent two days there last month. They uncovered a large number of artefacts, from old nails used to build the POW hut, to the remains of the Japanese food store, kitchen knives, a wok support, an army mug, a heavy machine-gun bullet, and various knives that could be used as weapons. They were preparing to leave when Mr Silver took their metal detector outside the general search area. He shouted for his wife and their helpers to come. They had unearthed the last desperately sad evidence in the Sandakan story.

Mr Silver cannot explain why he moved from the POW hut search area to where he found the artefacts. Tham Yau Kong and Othman Minudin have no such problem: the spirits of thePOWs were at work.