[2], Thailand was a neutral country at the onset of World War II. [42][43] Workers were moved up and down the railway line as needed. Thinking back, she recalls the Australian man who made a great sacrifice to aid her and her fellow prisoners of war. Life in the POW camps was recorded at great risk by artists such as Jack Bridger Chalker, Philip Meninsky, John Mennie, Ashley George Old, and Ronald Searle. Privacy Policy. 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'. Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. The quality of medical care received by different groups of prisoners varied enormously. It gives a narrative and pictorial account of life in POW camps north of Australia during World War II. [29], The number of Southeast Asian workers recruited or impressed to work on the Burma railway has been estimated to have been more than 180,000 Southeast Asian civilian labourers (rmusha). In March 1944, when the bulk of the prisoners were in the main camps at Chungkai, Tamarkan, Kanchanaburi, Tamuan, Non Pladuk and Nakom Paton, conditions temporarily improved. Some workers were attracted by the relatively high wages, but the working conditions for the rmusha were deadly. It is also known from a study of the Australians who joined the army in World War II that they were generally young and unmarried. [66][67] No compensation or reparations have been provided to Southeast Asian victims. Photo taken on Aug. 19, 2020 shows the bridge over the River Kwai, the most notable part of the "Death Railway," in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. A large number of the British and Australian captives were sent to Burma (Myanmar). Jayma April 17, 2022. On 16 January 1946, the British ordered Japanese POWs to remove a four kilometre stretch of rail between Nikki (Ni Thea) and Sonkrai. Little detailed research has been done on the background of Australian POWs and how this affected their chances of survival. Steve White-do-not-use. The rice was of poor quality, frequently maggoty or in other ways contaminated, and fish, meat, oil, salt and sugar were on a minimum scale. As a result of war bombing on bridges repeatedly, the Japanese used it to supply their troops in Burma. 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. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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. [69] It was this Bridge 277 that was to be attacked with the help of one of the world's first examples of a precision-guided munition, the US VB-1 AZON MCLOS-guided 1,000lb aerial ordnance, on 23 January 1945. Lieutenant General Eiguma Ishida, overall commander of the Burma Railway, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. It is open to general traffic from Ban Pong to Kanchanaburi, about 33 miles.Japanese communications depended upon a long and exposed sea route to Rangoon via Singapore and the Strait of Malacca, and a road (quite unfit for prolonged heavy traffic) from Raheng through Kowkarelk to Moulmein. The bulk of these forces were captured with the fall of Singapore, an event widely characterized as the worst military defeat in British history. The first train to pass Konkoita on the newly constructed Burma-Thailand railway, built for the Japanese by prisoner of war (POW) labour. Thus, ferries were needed as an alternative connecting system. Throughout the building of the railway, food supplies were irregular and totally inadequate. More than one in five of them died there. During its construction more than 16 ,000 prisoners of war died - mainly of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion - and were buried along the railway. POWs and Asian workers were also used to build the Kra Isthmus Railway from Chumphon to Kra Buri, and the Sumatra or Palembang Railway from Pekanbaru to Muaro. They were joined in captivity by three hundred survivors of the sinking of the HMAS Perth in the Battle of Java Sea in late February 1942. The Burma Railway, also known as the SiamBurma Railway, ThaiBurma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a 415km (258mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat, Burma (now called Myanmar). Chungkai War Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, has a further 1,693 war graves. Notebook kept by Captain Harold Lord, regular officer in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), whilst a Japanese prisoner of war working on the Burma-Thailand railway in 1943, listing neatly and chronologically the names of the British prisoners of war who worked on the railway, May - December 1943, together with the following information about each: rank, serial number, regiment, date of birth, home address, next-of-kin, religion, date on which arrived at the camp, and date of leaving because of illness (the type of illness is stated in each case) or, as in many cases, death. [68] In February 1943, 1,000 Dutch prisoners of war were added to Tamarkan. This was to be over 400 Km long through inhospitable jungle and hills. Taff suffered from dysentery, malaria, beri beri and cholera but, unlike so many, he survived. [30][33], In early 1943, the Japanese advertised for workers in Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, promising good wages, short contracts, and housing for families. When Britainwent to waron 3 September 1939 there was none of the 'flag-waving patriotism' of August 1914. [57][58], In addition to malnutrition and physical abuse, malaria, cholera, dysentery and tropical ulcers were common contributing factors in the death of workers on the Burma Railway. Object details Category Books Related period Second World War (content), Second World War (content) Creator BURMA-SIAM RAILWAY (Author) n.pub. Its route was through Three Pagodas Pass on the border of Thailand and Burma. Another thirteen letter parties, L to X, soon followed, taking the number of British working on the railway at the end of 1942 to around 20 000. More than 12,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and tens of thousands of forced labourers perished during its construction. 0 9 4 minutes read. On 17 October 1943, construction gangs originating in Burma working south met up with construction gangs originating in Thailand working north. Hekking died in 1994. The Japanese hoped to capture the Indian region of Assam, with the intention of using it as the base for an insurrection under the Japanese-backed Indian revolutionary leader Subhas Chandra Bose. The graves of those who died during the construction and maintenance of the Burma-Siam railway (except Americans, who were repatriated) have been transferred from the camp burial grounds and solitary sites along the railway into three war cemeteries. In the opening months of the Pacific War, Japanese forces struck Allied bases throughout the western Pacific and Southeast Asia as part of the so-called Southern Operation. Vegetables and other perishables long in transit arrived rotten. They had very little transportation to get stuff to and from the workers, they had almost no medication, they couldnt get food let alone materials, they had no tools to work with except for basic things like spades and hammers, and they worked in extremely difficult conditions in the jungle with its heat and humidity. In the years that followed the military units to which the Australians belonged were broken up into work forces to meet the Japanese need for labour. Troops from the 7th Division embarked on the HMT Orcades arriving at Batavia from the Middle East in early 1942 in a last-minute effort to defend the Netherlands East Indies from Japanese attack. [18][19] The Japanese staff would travel by train C56 31 from Nong Pladuk, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma. [23][24] The money was used to compensate neighbouring countries and colonies for material stolen by Japan during the construction of the railway. [33] Other documents suggest that more than 100,000 Malayan Tamils were brought into the project and around 60,000 perished.[35][36]. Abstract. [70], The bridge was made famous by Pierre Boulle's novel The Bridge over the River Kwai and its film adaptation, The Bridge on the River Kwai. Neither drugs or surgical instruments were supplied by the Japanese, and although later on certain medical supplies were made available they were always inadequate. The Japanese had been surprised by the reaction of world opinion against their treatment of prisoners of war, and there is evidence that they began to feel apprehensive about the heavy casualties of 1943, and made efforts to counteract their reputation for uncivilised treatment of prisoners. Red Cross parcels helped, but these were invariably held up by the Japanese. The defendants were charged with crimes against Western prisoners of war and civilians and with crimes against local people. Most of the prisoners of the Japanese were Australian Army about 21 000. by Howard Margolian. The records of a million World War II Prisoners of War will be published online today. The estimated number of civilian labourers and POWs who died during construction varies considerably, but the Australian Government figures suggest that of the 330,000 people who worked on the line (including 250,000 Asian labourers and 61,000 Allied POWs) about 90,000 of the labourers and about 16,000 Allied prisoners died.[30]. The railway was to run 420 kilometres through rugged jungle. No prisoner of war may be employed at labors for which he is physically unfit. Contact our Media sales & Licensing team about access. When you got back to your sleeping platform you only had a tin of water to wash your feet. After the war ended some Australian POWs remembered their captivity as a time in which the typical qualities of the Australian soldier came to the fore. ARTICLE 29. Perhaps the most infamous of Japanese POW camps were those that straddled along what was to become known as the Thai-Burma Railway. Director Jonathan Teplitzky Writers Frank Cottrell Boyce (screenplay) Andy Paterson (screenplay) Eric Lomax (book) Stars Coast also details the camaraderie, pastimes, and humour of the POWs in the face of adversity.[47]. The only redeeming feature was the ease with which the sick could be evacuated to base hospitals in trains returning empty from Burma. 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. 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. 37,583 prisoners from the United Kingdom, Commonwealth and Dominions, 28,500 from Netherlands and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan. 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. Rivers and canyons had to be bridged and sections of mountains had to be cut away to create a bed that was straight and level enough to accommodate the narrow-gauge track. Altogether, some 35,000 parachute and glider troops were involved in the operation. Those who stayed behind were accommodated in camp "hospitals" which were simply one or more crude jungle huts. 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. Many are now held by the Australian War Memorial, State Library of Victoria, and the Imperial War Museum in London. They have no latrines. Unbeknown to his captors, and at the risk of losing his life if discovered, he kept a diary documenting life. is a compelling account of the experiences of a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII - from the humiliating defeat at Singapore, to forced labour on the Saigon docks and the horrors of life on the infamous Burma Railway. [73] Bad weather forced the cancellation of the mission and the AZON was never deployed against the bridge. In due course the inevitable happened - a cholera epidemic broke out. [39] More prisoners of war were imported from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies as construction advanced. by Ezra Hoyt Ripple (Editor), Mark A. Snell (Editor) Hardcover - 168 pages. The Japanese stopped all work on . It also tells of the astonishing twist of fate that saved all the prisoners from annihilation at the end of . [34] Approximately 90,000 Burmese and 75,000 Malayans worked on the railroad. The railway connected Thailand and Burma and was shut down in 1947, after the war. THAILAND_POW_Camps_rosters (WO 361-2171) - Numerous rosters of POWs in Thailand. The name used by the Japanese Government was TaiMen Rensetsu Tetsud (), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway. The first prisoners of war to work in Thailand, 3,000 British soldiers, left Changi by train in June 1942 to Ban Pong, the southern terminus of the railway. 69 miles (111km) of the railway were in Burma and the remaining 189 miles (304km) were in Thailand. The movement of POWs northward from Changi Prison in Singapore and other prison camps in Southeast Asia began in May 1942. As before, their food and accommodation were minor considerations. In 1960, because of discrepancies between facts and fiction, the portion of the Mae Klong which passes under the bridge was renamed the Khwae Yai ( in the Thai language; in English, 'big tributary'). The remains of United States personnel were repatriated. 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