Introduction Thirumaran Over the past 5 years, Dr. Thirumaran’s research focus has been in Singapore,

113 © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 P. Mandal, J. Vong eds., Development of Tourism and the Hospitality Industry in Southeast Asia , Managing the Asian Century, DOI 10.1007978-981-287-606-5_8 Chapter 8 Understanding Dark Tourism Acceptance in Southeast Asia: The Case of WWII Sandakan–Ranau Death March, Sabah, Malaysia Meltina Masanti Abstract Recently, the idea of dark tourism has grown to be part of tourism fasci- nation, and the trend has spiked to an increasing number of people traveling to visit places where battles, massacres, and evil deeds were carried out in the past. Despite the increasing demand of dark tourism visitation, Malaysia among other countries in Southeast Asia is still very careful on branding and promoting its potential attrac- tion as “dark tourism” site. Based on the WWII Sandakan–Ranau Death March, this preliminary study is intended to understand through conceptualizing the local com- munity acceptance toward the potential dark tourism development in Sabah, Malaysia. The study argues that due to the local community custom, belief, and culture, the exploitation of grief, death, and dark tragedy in the past as dark tourism attraction, with the intention of satisfying touristic experience, is less acceptable. It is also suggested that the acceptance factors among the local community have infl u- enced the decision and perspective in exploring and branding a potential site as dark tourism attraction. Keywords Dark tourism • Malaysia • Sandakan–Ranau Death March • Local com- munity • Cultural acceptance • Southeast Asia

8.1 Introduction

“What do you mean by dark tourism? Reliving the suffering and exhibiting the details of our grief? Some part of the past is better leave untold, let it be a history, recorded, manu- scripted, but leave it like that. If everything is tourism material, what then left to our cul- ture?” – Interview with old folks of Ranau. M. Masanti Tambunan Community College , Jabatan Pengajian Kolej Komuniti, Kementerian Pendidikan Tinggi Malaysia , 89650 , Tambunan , Sabah , Malaysia e-mail: meltina86yahoo.com balitrulyyahoo.com In a recent trend, dark tourism visitation is seen as a new niche of tourism attrac- tion. Tourists have begun to look into a different dimension of touristic satisfaction and redefi ned the typical tourism experience. The concepts of dark tourism niche are drawing particular attention to a dark tourism site as an alternative way to enhance tourist destination toward a specifi c areacountry. Visitors seem to be interested to visit sites where disaster, mass death, and horrifying events took place in the past. The appetite for this type of visitation interest came from people’s fear of death, fear of torture and suffering, and fear of being killed. The reason why it still captivates the curiosity of certain people still remains a wide open topic for discussion. There is countless studies on the subject of dark tourism and its association to mass death, suffering as a form in tourism and hospitality fi elds. The term dark tourism was coined in the 1990s by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley. It describes the increas- ingly popular tourist practice of visiting sites associated with themes of death, dying, and atrocity Lennon and Foley 1999 . Various other terms such as “thanatourism” Rojek 1993 , “black spot” tourism Beech 2000 , and “atrocity” Merriam-Webster 2014 are used less frequently to describe the same phenomenon. More research focusing on the barrier development for dark tourism site attrac- tion is still widely needed as most of the research is focusing on the motivation of visitation and few researches are available to study on the barrier of this type of visi- tation. It is vital to understand the motivation of this visitation in order to know the issues that contradict to the local community’s beliefs and fi lter their administration acceptance toward the development of dark tourism. Tourism attraction develop- ment is commonly perfected with good promotion of various cultural and historical values for tourism. If dark tourism is to be developed, parties involved need to care- fully understand the local community customs, belief, and culture and whether such niche of tourism development is accepted or not. While tourists may see a dark tourism site as an attempt for them to relate with death and desire to experience something that may not be morally right, the local community will react by their traditional context of religion and culture. However, this may not be same for the local community from a different ethnicity and country, for some may react openly positively, while others perceive it as negatively taboo. The objective of this study is to discuss the acceptance of dark tourism in Southeast Asia with a particular focus on the Sandakan–Ranau Death March. This will provide contextual fi ndings and hopeful benefi cial as a background framework for future research to providing more concrete and statistical data.

8.2 Background