Four prisoners of war with beri-beri, Nam Tok, 1943 Life and death on the railway The railway took 12 months to build, with final completion on 16 October 1943. Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop an Australian surgeon and legend among prisoners of the Thai Burma Railway in World War II; [25][26] After the accident, it was decided to end the line at Nam Tok and reuse the remainder to rehabilitate the line. Highlights. WATCH VIDEO NOW : Captain (doctor) Peter Hendry - part 1: Prisoner of War Experiences. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. [14][15][16], The railway was completed ahead of schedule. In all, over 8000 of these men and women around 35 per cent would die during captivity, more than 2800 of them working on the ThaiBurma railway. The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project inspired by the need for improved communications to maintain the large Japanese Armv in Burma. Their death rates on the ThaiBurma railway were little different from the British and higher than the Dutch. ARTICLE 30. [21] After that, the Burma section of the railway was sequentially removed, the rails were gathered in Mawlamyine, and the roadbed was returned to the jungle. More than 250 miles of railway, from Thanbyuzayat in Burma to Ban Pong in Thailand, remained to be constructed, much of it through mountainous country and dense jungle, in a region with one of the worst climates in the world.The Japanese aimed at completing the railway in 14 months, or at least by the end of l943. The book Through the Valley of the Kwai and the 2001 film To End All Wars are an autobiography of British Army captain Ernest Gordon. Nearly all our Australian POW Books are true stories many written by the Australian POW who worked on the Thai Burma Railway during WW2. As a result of war bombing on bridges repeatedly, the Japanese used it to supply their troops in Burma. [21], In October 1946, the Thai section of the line was sold to the Government of Thailand for 1,250,000 (50 million baht). Little detailed research has been done on the background of Australian POWs and how this affected their chances of survival. On 16 January 1946, the British ordered Japanese POWs to remove a four kilometre stretch of rail between Nikki (Ni Thea) and Sonkrai. "[46] The living and working conditions on the Burma Railway were often described as "horrific", with maltreatment, sickness, and starvation. [21][22] The railway link between Thailand and Burma was to be separated again for protecting British interests in Singapore. However, the British would form only a minority of the Allied POWs in Burma. Articles on the Australian medical personnel working on the railway. Imprest Burmese and Malay labourers too died in their thousands - exactly how many will never be known. [33] Other documents suggest that more than 100,000 Malayan Tamils were brought into the project and around 60,000 perished.[35][36]. Repeated reconnaissance flights over the Burma end of the railway started early in 1943, followed by bombings at intervals. [53], The construction of the Burma Railway is counted as a war crime committed by Japan in Asia. April 1942 to October 1943. Another group, numbering 190 US personnel, to whom Lieutenant Henri Hekking, a Dutch medical officer with experience in the tropics was assigned, suffered only nine deaths. The construction of the railway has been the subject of a novel and an award-winning film, The Bridge on the River Kwai (itself an adaptation of the French language novel The Bridge over the River Kwai); a novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, and a large number of personal accounts of POW experiences. The two curved spans of the bridge which collapsed due to the British air attack were replaced by angular truss spans provided by Japan as part of their postwar reparations, thus forming the iconic bridge now seen today. Work on the railway started at Thanbyuzayat on 1st October 1942 and somewhat later at Ban Pong. [39] More prisoners of war were imported from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies as construction advanced. The largest of these is at Hellfire Pass (north of the current terminus at Nam Tok), a cutting where the greatest number of people died. WAR Graves - Burma - Siam Railway On 6th December 1948 an expedition consisting of an officer, one Siamese interpreter, two police guards, one cook and one general duties coolie, left Kanburi for Takanun by motor boat. When the Japanese conquered much of South East Asia in late 1941 and early 1942 they captured more than 50 000 British military personnel. Lt Col Coates the greatest doctor on the Burma Thailand Railway. Two hundred men were housed in each barracks, giving each man a two-foot wide space in which to live and sleep. One of the earliest and most respected accounts is ex-POW John Coast's Railroad of Death, first published in 1946 and republished in a new edition in 2014. To avoid a hazardous 2,000-mile (3,200km) sea journey around the Malay peninsula, a railway from Bangkok to Rangoon seemed a feasible alternative. [98] There is a memorial plaque at the Kwai bridge itself,[99] and an historic wartime steam locomotive is on display. A total of 50,000 troops were captured at one time there."He then got moved to Malai POW Camp 1 in Thailand, and transferred to Camp 2 to build the Burma Railway."He was liberated in 1945 . Sidi Barrani, on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, had been occupied by the Italian 10th Army, during the Italian invasion of Egypt (9-16 September 1940) and was attacked by British, Commonwealth and imperial . Japanese soldiers, 12,000 of them, including 800 Koreans, were employed on the railway as engineers, guards, and supervisors of the POW and rmusha labourers. More recently, the motion picture The Railway Man (based on the book of the same name) also gives insight into the barbaric conditions and suffering that were inflicted upon the workers who built the railway. This owes something to the fact that in F Force, where British and Australian numbers were roughly equal, some 2036 British died compared to 1060 Australians in the period up to May 1944. Brought up by barge on the Kwai Noi river, or by lorry on a road which was merely a converted jungle track, a consistent service could not be maintained by either method, and rations were nearly always below even the Japanese official scales. The Burma Railway, also known as the Siam-Burma Railway, Thai-Burma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a 415 km (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat, Burma (now called Myanmar). The majority of the army personnel were from the 8th Division. To supply their forces in Burma, the Japanese depended upon the sea, bringing supplies and troops to Burma around the Malay peninsula and through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. Whatever tensions there may have been during captivity, the Dutch, British and Australians who died on the ThaiBurma railway were buried together after the war. These became more and more frequent when, towards the end of October 1943, trains full of Japanese troops and supplies began to go through from Thailand to Burma. Javanese, Malayan Tamils of Indian origin, Burmese, Chinese, Thai, and other Southeast Asians, forcibly drafted by the Imperial Japanese Army to work on the railway, died in its construction. These activities engaged numerous POWs as actors, singers, musicians, designers, technicians, and female impersonators. The railway was overworked carrying troops and military supplies, and local traders seldom visited the camps of the working parties, small compared with those of 1943 and therefore not so profitable; so that supplementary food supplies were scanty, and again sickness took its toll. The horrendous experiences endured by the thousands of POWs has made the Burma Railway a place of pilgrimage and commemoration. If you are joining after August, please choose the month you are joining in below. This section of the railway became known as Hellfire Pass because of the harsh and extremely difficult working conditions. Part Two: Capture Examines the shock of capture for Australians, with first-hand accounts describing the physical circumstances of internment, and the feelin. ", "Yamashita: the greatest Japanese general of World War II? The railway track from Kanchanaburi - photographed in 1945. The Japanese would not allow the prisoners to construct a symbol (a white triangle on a blue base) indicating the presence of a prisoner of war camp, and these raids added their quota to the deaths on the line. [9] On 23 June 1942, 600 British soldiers arrived at Camp Nong Pladuk, Thailand to build a camp to serve as a transit camp for the work camps along the railway. by Ezra Hoyt Ripple (Editor), Mark A. Snell (Editor) Hardcover - 168 pages. In one raid alone on the Non Pladuk area, where the camp was located amongst sidings holding petrol, ammunition and store trains protected by an anti-aircraft post, and prisoners were not allowed to leave the huts.95 were killed and 300 wounded. During its construction more than 16 ,000 prisoners of war died - mainly of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion - and were buried along the railway. The line was abandoned beyond Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi;[27][22] the steel rails were salvaged for reuse in expanding the Bang Sue railway yard, reinforcing the BangkokBan Phachi Junction double track, rehabilitating the track from Thung Song Junction to Trang, and constructing both the Nong Pla DukSuphan Buri and Ban Thung PhoKhiri Rat Nikhom branch lines. Such extreme mortality was experienced by Australian and British prisoners of war (POW) forced to build the Thai-Burma railway during the Second World War. Malaria, dysentery and pellagra (a vitamin deficiency disease) attacked the prisoners, and the number of sick in the camps was always high. At the same time the 'Sweat Army' of labourers from Burma, ostensibly volunteers but many conscripted by the puppet Burmese government, toiled on the construction work. [6], In early 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma and seized control of the colony from the United Kingdom. [50] Charles died in December 2009. [75] Repair work soon commenced afterwards and continued again and both bridges were operational again by the end of May. This is ironic, since for most of the war in the Pacific Changi was, in reality, one of the most benign of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps; its privations were relatively minor compared to those of others, particularly those on the Burma-Thailand railway. BURMA-04_roster (WO 361-2204) - British and American POWs at Burma Camp 6, later IV. The prisoners were sent to various destinations throughout the Pacific and Southeast Asia to provide forced labour for the Japanese army, journeys that carried with them a taste of the nightmare to come. Initially, 1,000 prisoners worked on the bridge and were commanded by Colonel Philip Toosey. Nearly 15 000 were captured on Singapore in February 1942 and over a thousand on each of Ambon, Dutch Timor, and New Britain. (Supplied: Andrew Glynn) Families find long-lost answers Object details Category Books Related period Second World War (content), Second World War (content) Creator BURMA-SIAM RAILWAY (Author) n.pub. These coolies have been brought from Malaya under false pretenses 'easy work, good pay, good houses!' The greater part of the Thai section of the river's route followed the valley of the Khwae Noi River (khwae, 'stream, river' or 'tributary'; noi, 'small'. [69] An unknown number of Malayan workers were housed in a nearby camp. These were men from the 7th Division who had been brought back from the Middle East to help defend the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) from the Japanese attack in early 1942. On 24 June 1949, the portion from Kanchanaburi to Nong Pla Duk (Thai ) was finished; on the first of April 1952, the next section up to Wang Pho (Wangpo) was done. Estimates vary but the number who worked on the railway was possibly as high as 18 000. 0 9 4 minutes read. Published by Marsworth. Steve White-do-not-use. The Burma Railway, also called the Death Railway, was built between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma, put together with a ready supply of labour in the form of. They were outnumbered by the British, the Dutch and large cohorts of Asian labourers (rmusha), particularly Burmese and Tamils from Malaya. Since the 1990s various proposals have been made to rebuild the complete railway, but as of 2021[update] these plans had not been realised. Max Heiliger did a lot more then just laundering money for the Nazis. Among the Allied POWs were some 30,000 British, 13,000 Australians, 18,000 Dutch, and 700 Americans. More than 11 percent of civilian internees and 27 percent of Allied POWs died or were killed while in Japanese custody; by contrast, the death rate for Allied POWs in German camps was around 4 percent. Education Zone | Developed By Rara Theme. While civilians were generally treated better than military prisoners, conditions in Japanese captivity were almost universally deplorable. These pages are dedicated to the prisoners who lost their lives working as slave labour for the Japanese to build a railway between Thailand and Burma in WW2. Records of the Army Staff, RG 319. On 3 April, a second bombing raid, this time by Liberator heavy bombers of the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), damaged the wooden railroad bridge once again. In addition, approximately 130,000 civiliansincluding some 40,000 childrenwere captured by the Japanese. Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, in the city of Kanchanaburi, contains the graves of 6,982 personnel comprising: A memorial at the Kanchanaburi cemetery lists 11 other members of the Indian Army, who are buried in nearby Muslim cemeteries.[94]. During this time, prisoners suffered from disease, malnutrition, and cruel forms of punishment and torture inflicted by the Japanese. Some have even brought wives and children. [23] On 1 February 1947, two people including Momluang Kri Dechatiwong[th], the Thai Minister of Transport, were killed on an inspection tour because the bridge near Konkoita had collapsed. Since the 8th Division was raised during the crisis of the fall of France in mid-1940, these men would also have chosen to play a role in averting Allied defeat. There were additionally about 250,000 natives (coolies) who were previously residents of countries including Java, Ambon, Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Tamils who had been working in some of these countries. Finally, on 1 July 1958, the rail line was completed to Nam Tok (Thai , 'waterfall', referring to the nearby Sai Yok Noi Waterfall) The portion in use today is some 130km (81mi) long. At the end of the war, the Japanese Armed Forces destroyed all documents related to the POW Camps. Sixty-nine men were beaten to death by Japanese guards in the twelve weeks it took to build the cutting, and many more died from cholera, dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion. [59], Several museums are dedicated to those who perished building the railway. The overwhelming majority of Allied POWs were from Commonwealth countries; they included approximately 22,000 Australians (of whom 21,000 were from the Australian Army, 354 from the Royal Australian Navy, and 373 from the Royal Australian Air Force), more than 50,000 British troops, and at least 25,000 Indian troops. On 26 October 1942, British prisoners of war arrived at Tamarkan to construct the bridge. The youth of many Australian prisoners of war was very evident and many enlisted at an age younger than 20. Many remember Japanese soldiers as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war and the Asian rmusha. Memorial sites along the route of the railway include the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, where nearly 7,000 Allied dead are interred, and . [90], Three cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) contain the vast majority of Allied military personnel who died on the Burma Railway.[90]. Dutch chemist Van Boxtell. The two sections of the line met at kilometre 263, about 18km (11mi) south of the Three Pagodas Pass at Konkoita (nowadays: Kaeng Khoi Tha, Sangkhla Buri District, Kanchanaburi Province). By late spring 1942, with the surrender of Allied strongholds in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies, an estimated 140,000 Allied prisoners of war had fallen into Japanese hands. In October 1943, the railway station was finished. However, it is known that all of them had volunteered to serve. [32], One of the most notable portions of the entire railway line is Bridge 277, the so-called "Bridge on the River Kwai", which was built over a stretch of the river that was then known as part of the Mae Klong River. The railway was to run 420 kilometres through rugged jungle. The Australian, British, Dutch and other Allied prisoners of war, along with Chinese, Malay, and Tamil labourers, were required by the Japanese to complete the cutting. One factor was that many European and US doctors had little experience with tropical diseases. Photocopy. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also . [13], Estimates of deaths among Southeast Asian civilians subject to forced labour, often known as rmusha, vary widely, because statistics are incomplete and fragmented. [38] The labourers that suffered the highest casualties were Burmese and Indian Tamils from Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as many Javanese.[30]. The Factors of Survival. [78][79], In 1946,[89] the remains of most of the war dead were moved from former POW camps, burial grounds and lone graves along the rail line to official war cemeteries. ARTICLE 29. Only the first 130 kilometres (81mi) of the line in Thailand remained, with trains still running as far north as Nam Tok. This is the bridge that still remains today. Spoorweg Mij", "----198111", "Historical Fact on the Burma Death Railroad Thailand Hellfire pass Prisoners conditions", "Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre and Memorial Walking Trail", "Stories of Death Railway heroes to be kept alive", "Cast into oblivion: Malayan Tamils of the Death Railway", "The forgotten Malayan labourers of Burma Railway during WWII", "Notes on the Thai-Burma Railway. Universally deplorable POWs has made the Burma Thailand railway of pilgrimage and.... Indifferent to the POW Camps 000 British military personnel protecting British interests in Singapore and... The Dutch East Indies as construction advanced war Cemetery, where nearly 7,000 Allied dead interred! The end of the army personnel were from the 8th Division is counted as war. Little experience with tropical diseases choose the month you are joining in.! 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