His account of the conditions and suffering endured by his fellow prisoners and himself makes for the most extraordinary and disturbing reading. Over 60,000 prisoners worked on its construction, the majority of whom were British, and some 20% died before release in 1945. Altogether, some 35,000 parachute and glider troops were involved in the operation. Burma Railway, also called Burma-Siam Railway, railway built during World War II connecting Bangkok and Moulmein (now Mawlamyine), Burma (Myanmar). 493.8 Records of the Peiping headquarters Group 1946-47 493.1 Administrative History Related Records: Records of U.S. Army Service Forces (World War II), RG 160. Throughout the building of the railway, food supplies were irregular and totally inadequate. [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. Among the Allied POWs were some 30,000 British, 13,000 Australians, 18,000 Dutch, and 700 Americans. A great deal of equipment was improvised by the medical officers and orderlies, and food and medicines were clandestinely obtained. After the Japanese were defeated in the Battles of the Coral Sea (May 48, 1942) and Midway (June 36, 1942), the sea-lanes between the Japanese home islands and Burma were no longer secure. However, the film and book contain many historical inaccuracies, and should be considered works of fiction. 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. Steve White-do-not-use. The records of a million World War II Prisoners of War will be published online today. The rail line was built along the Khwae Noi (Kwai) River valley to support the Japanese armed forces during the Burma Campaign. Thailand - Burma Railway. The decision to complete the railway connecting Moulmein with Bangkok, which had been commenced before the war but abandoned by the two countries concerned, was taken in June 1942. 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. by Ezra Hoyt Ripple (Editor), Mark A. Snell (Editor) Hardcover - 168 pages. Malaria, dysentery and pellagra (a vitamin deficiency disease) attacked the prisoners, and the number of sick in the camps was always high. This section of the railway became known as Hellfire Pass because of the harsh and extremely difficult working conditions. Yet in relative terms, Australian POW deaths were very significant, accounting for around 20 per cent of all Australian deaths in World War II. 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burma_Railway&oldid=1133973618, Iron bridge across Kwae Yai River at Tha Makham, Arch Flanagan (19152013), Australian soldier and father of novelist, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 11:22. [68] In February 1943, 1,000 Dutch prisoners of war were added to Tamarkan. Railway Construction Camp - Kanya, Thailand. utilisation of prisoner of war labour in japanese prisoner of war camps. The Prisoner List. Published by Marsworth. Between June 1942 and October 1943 the POWs and forced labourers laid some 258 miles (415 km) of track from Ban Pong, Thailand (roughly 45 miles [72 km] west of Bangkok), to Thanbyuzayat, Burma (roughly 35 miles [56 km] south of Mawlamyine). [60] However, authorities agree that the percentage of deaths among the rmusha was much higher than among the Allied military personnel. Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 331. George, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was a POW in Java in 1942. [30] Other nationalities and ethnic groups working on the railway were Tamils, Chinese, Karen, Javanese, and Singaporean Chinese. 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. 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. Since the upper part of the Khwae valley is now flooded by the Vajiralongkorn Dam,[19] and the surrounding terrain is mountainous, it would take extensive tunnelling to reconnect Thailand with Burma by rail. [64] Hiroshi Abe, a first lieutenant who supervised construction of the railway at Sonkrai where 600 British prisoners out of 1,600 died of cholera and other diseases,[65] was sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison, as a B/C class war criminal. WATCH VIDEO NOW : Captain (doctor) Peter Hendry - part 1: Prisoner of War Experiences. Map Created by Philip Cross July 2000. Used with permission of the author, Lilian Sluyter. 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. [10][11] After preliminary work of airfields and infrastructure, construction of the railway began in Burma and Thailand on 16 September 1942. [23][24] The money was used to compensate neighbouring countries and colonies for material stolen by Japan during the construction of the railway. "[38], The first prisoners of war, 3,000 Australians, to go to Burma left Changi Prison in Singapore on 14 May 1942 and journeyed by sea to near Thanbyuzayat ( in the Burmese language; in English 'Tin Shelter'), the northern terminus of the railway. Most of the railway was dismantled shortly after the war. 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. Though medical consequences of war attract attention, the health consequences of the prisoner-of-war (POW) experience are poorly researched and apprec . 321 relations. Aside from the classic British-American film in 1957, Bridge on the River Kwai, the struggles prisoners of war endured in Burma and the making of the "death railway" became a "forgotten war" - it got lost in the Western Front's heroics and the ugly truth about the horrifying gas chambers found in the Nazis' prison camps. 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. About 60,000 were sent to work on the railway; 13,000 of them were Australian. To pursue those ends and to support their continued offensives in the Burma theatre, the Japanese began construction of what came to be known as the Burma Railway. 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). The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project, driven by the need for improved communication to support the large Japanese army in Burma. [62], Workers in more isolated areas suffered a much higher death rate than did others. [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). From late 1942 more than 13 000 Australians were sent from Singapore, Java and Timor to work on the ThaiBurma railway. Two forces, one based in Thailand and one in Burma, worked from opposite ends' of the line towards the centre.When the first of the prisoners arrived their initial task was the construction of camps at Kanchanaburi and Ban Pong in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma. [13], Estimates of deaths among Southeast Asian civilians subject to forced labour, often known as rmusha, vary widely, because statistics are incomplete and fragmented. Most of the camps were right alongside the railway track and some were near bridges and other vulnerable points. [8], The project aimed to connect Ban Pong in Thailand with Thanbyuzayat in Burma, linking up with existing railways at both places. Gradually more forces were sent to Burma and Thailand; in total more than 60,000 prisoners of war were transported to the railway project during 1942-3. [77], Hellfire Pass in the Tenasserim Hills was a particularly difficult section of the line to build: it was the largest rock cutting on the railway, it was in a remote area and the workers lacked proper construction tools during building. 61,000 Prisoners of War were forced to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway in the most atrocious conditions. Dancing Along the Deadline : The Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the Confederacy. [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. Over 22 000 Australians were captured by the Japanese when they conquered South East Asia in early 1942. 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. Another cohort of 450 US personnel suffered 100 deaths. Elsewhere in the Pacific some 10 000 British, Canadian and Indian troops were captured when Hong Kong fell in December 1941 and further 5000 in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) in early 1942. In 1943 Dutch prisoners were sent to Thailand where they suffered the same hardships as other Allied POWs. 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. Thinking back, she recalls the Australian man who made a great sacrifice to aid her and her fellow prisoners of war. An Australian memorial is at Hellfire Pass. This is a list of notable prisoners of war (POW) whose imprisonment attracted notable attention or influence, or who became famous afterwards. For the railways of the country Burma, see, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "The Japanese invasion of Thailand, 8 December 1941", "How was Thailand Impacted in World War 2? Hekking died in 1994. [75] Repair work soon commenced afterwards and continued again and both bridges were operational again by the end of May. Human hair was often used for brushes, plant juices and blood for paint, and toilet paper as the "canvas". The Death Railway is only one of the names describing the Japanese project built in 1943 to provide support to its forces during World War II. During World War II, the Japanese forced more than 60,000 allied prisoners of war and nearly 300,000 Southeast Asian laborers to build a 415km railway across the mountains and jungles between Thailand and Myanmar (then Burma). Major Sotomatsu Chida was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In October 1942 a similar-sized group of British POWs left Singapore for Thailand and were employed around Kanchanaburi and on building the steel bridge at Tha Markam which would later become known as The Bridge on the River Kwai. Two hundred men were housed in each barracks, giving each man a two-foot wide space in which to live and sleep. The name used by the Japanese Government was TaiMen Rensetsu Tetsud (), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway. Director Jonathan Teplitzky Writers Frank Cottrell Boyce (screenplay) Andy Paterson (screenplay) Eric Lomax (book) Stars Flanagan's 2013 book The Narrow Road to the Deep North centres on a group of Australian POWs and their experiences building the railway as slave labour, and was awarded the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Little is known of why the men of the 2nd AIF volunteered to serve. Ron Arad Israeli fighter pilot, shot down over Lebanon in 1986. . 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