The cuttings at Hellfire Pass became known as the speedo period, after a solecistic command shouted by Japanese guards and engineers to their English-speaking prisoners. 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. [47] Coast's work is noted for its detail on the brutality of some Japanese and Korean guards as well as the humanity of others. In Burma. More than one in five of them died there. 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. 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. [30][31][32] During the initial stages of the construction of the railway, Burmese and Thais were employed in their respective countries, but Thai workers, in particular, were likely to abscond from the project and the number of Burmese workers recruited was insufficient. 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. All nationalities listed by camp and/or party. Of the 668 US personnel forced to work on the railway, 133 died. The construction of the railway is a heartbreaking story of forced labor, with more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war . ", "Yamashita: the greatest Japanese general of World War II? The longest and deepest cuttings in the railway occurred at Konyu, some 45 miles (72 km) northwest of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. 3:09pm Oct 16, 2018. Many are now held by the Australian War Memorial, State Library of Victoria, and the Imperial War Museum in London. In reality, however, the death rates of British and Australians across all sites on the railway were scarcely any different 22 and 21 per cent respectively. Prisoners of War 330,000 people worked on building the railway, including 250,000 Asian laborers and 61,000 prisoners of war (POWs). [44], The construction camps consisted of open-sided barracks built of bamboo poles with thatched roofs. A newly wealthy English woman returns to Malaya to build a well for the villagers who helped her during war. In the War Cemetery at Thanbyuzayat in Burma lie those from the northern half of the line. Presidio Pr; ISBN: 0891415777. This gave rise to the name of "River Kwai" in English. 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'). Among the Allied POWs were some 30,000 British, 13,000 Australians, 18,000 Dutch, and 700 Americans. When the Japanese were not satisfied with the pace of work, prisoners were forced to endure atrocious physical punishment, and some 700 Allied prisoners died or were killed at Hellfire Pass. Most of the prisoners of the Japanese were Australian Army about 21 000. 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. They were some of 42 000 Dutch military and naval personnel and 100 000 Dutch civilians who were captured when the Japanese conquered the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942. Director: Jack Lee | Stars: Virginia McKenna, Peter Finch, Kenji Takaki, Tran Van Khe. In 1943 Dutch prisoners were sent to Thailand where they suffered the same hardships as other Allied POWs. The railway, built by the Empire of Japan in 1943 to support its attack on the British colony of Burma, used forced labour, including Asian civilians and Allied prisoners of war, many thousands of . Many men in the railway workforce bore the brunt of pitiless or uncaring guards. Sir Edward "Weary" Dunlop an Australian surgeon and legend among prisoners of the Thai Burma Railway in World War II; Estimates vary but the number who worked on the railway was possibly as high as 18 000. Repeated reconnaissance flights over the Burma end of the railway started early in 1943, followed by bombings at intervals. Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 331. Camps were usually named after the kilometre where they were located. When that failed to attract sufficient workers, they resorted to more coercive methods, rounding up workers and impressing them, especially in Malaya. A Bill Aldag Fergus Anckorn Charles Groves Wright Anderson Ken Anderson (politician) Harold Atcherley B Henri Baaij Edmund W. Barker Theo Bot Russell Braddon Jim Bradley (British Army officer) Gerard Bruggink C John Carrick (Australian politician) Johannes Gijsbertus de Casparis Forde Everard de Wend Cayley Fred Chadwick Jack Bridger Chalker More than a third of these men and women died in captivity. In 1942, Milton "Snow" Fairclough was taken prisoner by the Japanese army in Java and forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. 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. A bridge was not built until the Thanlwin Bridge (carrying both regular road and railroad traffic) was constructed between 2000 and 2005. 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. The Japanese demanded from each camp a certain percentage of its strength for working parties, irrespective of the number of sick, and to make up the required quota the Japanese camp commandants insisted on men totally unfit for work being driven out and sometimes carried out. [63] The most important trial was against the general staff. Their death rates on the ThaiBurma railway were little different from the British and higher than the Dutch. Its route was through Three Pagodas Pass on the border of Thailand and Burma. 1, 5 - 9 Their experience under these extreme wartime conditions is examined to discover the likely contribution of malaria-associated mortality to the total number of deaths. A former British Army officer, who was tortured as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II, discovers that the man responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and sets out to confront him. When you got back to your sleeping platform you only had a tin of water to wash your feet. The Japanese stopped all work on . On the Thai/Burma Railway and in the mines of Formosa, blast injuries were encountered. The Prisoner List 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. Australian prisoners of war 1941-1945 (ANZAC Portal, 2007, March) This is a part of the series, Australians in the Pacific War. Part II: Asian Romusha: The Silenced Voices of History", "Distances between camps on the Burma-Thailand Railway", "Last Man Out: A Memoir of the Burma-Thailand Death Railway", "Stolen Years: Australian prisoners of war The BurmaThailand Railway", "The Thailand-Burma Railway, 19421946: documents and selected writings", "Tamarkan, Tha Makham 56.20km - Thailand", "Forgotten Sikhs of the Siam -Burma Death Railway", "The lies that built The Bridge on the River Kwai", "Old China Hands, Tales & Stories The Azon Bomb", "Aerial photograph of Kanchanaburi, Thailand during a raid by Allied aircraft including", "Thanlwin Bridge (Mawlamyine), longest and largest in Myanmar, emerges to serve interests of State and region", "Railway of Death: Images of the construction of the BurmaThailand Railway 19421943", "Birma-Siam Spoorweg en de Pakan Baroe Spoorweg. [62], Workers in more isolated areas suffered a much higher death rate than did others. 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. He was taken to Ambon and apparently died in 1944 on board ship returning from Ambon to Java, After the war he was officially reported to have died on 6th September 1944 and buried at sea. 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. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Australians were not the largest national group on the railway. What mattered in captivity was not so much a mans nationality but the particular circumstances and location of the places in which he worked, his access to food, medicines and medical care, his genetic inheritance, and even his luck and will to survive. 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. Though medical consequences of war attract attention, the health consequences of the prisoner-of-war (POW) experience are poorly researched and apprec . The large population of local labourers, estimated to number around 100,000, had an even higher mortality rate. In 1943 Japan's high command decided to build a railway linking Thailand and Burma, to supply its campaign against the Allies in Burma. [33] Other documents suggest that more than 100,000 Malayan Tamils were brought into the project and around 60,000 perished.[35][36]. [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. However, it is known that all of them had volunteered to serve. Jun 9, 2015 - Explore Samm Blake's board "Burma Thai Railway Prisoners of War - Historical Footage / Photos", followed by 2,370 people on Pinterest. Altogether, some 35,000 parachute and glider troops were involved in the operation. Burma was a key strategic objective for the Japanese for two reasons. Burma-Siam Railway 1942-1945, Second World War. [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. The Japanese kept no records and it was impossible for anyone else to do so, nor were the graves marked, but between 80,000 and 100,000 perished. This was the same time at which Australians in A Force left Changi for Burma. Since the Netherlands East Indies had been under Dutch control for centuries, the Dutch POWs included not only Europeans but Eurasians, who had acquired full civil rights, and indigenous soldiers, including Sundanese, Javanese, Menadonese, Ambonese and Timorese. 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. 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. Only the devotion skill and enterprise of the prisoner of war medical staffs saved the lives of thousands and gradually evolved an organisation which could control disease and mortality. The dawn ceremony was held for the prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced to work and died on the Burma-Siam railway during the Japanese occupation. The newer steel and concrete bridge was made up of eleven curved-truss bridge spans which the Japanese builders brought from Java in the Dutch East Indies in 1942. At Chungkai War Cemetery and Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in Thailand now rest those recovered from the southern part of the line, from Ban Pong to Nieke - about half its length. 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. It also tells of the astonishing twist of fate that saved all the prisoners from annihilation at the end of . Alternatively, send a cheque to our treasurer, Cheques should be made payable to COFEPOW and sent to the following address:-, Mr. David BrownCOFEPOW14 RidgecroftAshton-Under-LyneLancashireOL7 9TGUnited Kingdom, Choose between a single or joint membership. However, the film and book contain many historical inaccuracies, and should be considered works of fiction. Max Heiliger-Laundering money for the Nazis. Used with permission of the author, Lilian Sluyter. 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. ARTICLE 29. The railway track from Kanchanaburi - photographed in 1945. But this phase soon passed and from May 1944 until the capitulation of Japan in August 1945 parties of prisoners were sent from the various base camps to work on railway maintenance, cut fuel for the locomotives, and handle stores at dumps along the line. More than 22 000 Australians were taken prisoner in the Asia-Pacific region in the early months of 1942. utilisation of prisoner of war labour in japanese prisoner of war camps. After the railway was completed, the POWs still had almost two years to survive before liberation. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. [10][11] After preliminary work of airfields and infrastructure, construction of the railway began in Burma and Thailand on 16 September 1942. 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]. 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. Little detailed research has been done on the background of Australian POWs and how this affected their chances of survival. Records of Naval Operating Forces, RG 313. 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. The cook-house and huts for the working parties came next and accommodation for the sick last of all. 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. Download Ground News for free here: https://ground.news/megaprojectsSimo. [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]. The total number of rmusha working on the railway may have reached 300,000 and according to some estimates, the death rate among them was as high as 50 percent. $14.00 View Detail [76], The new railway line did not fully connect with the Burmese railroad network as no railroad bridges were built which crossed the river between Moulmein and Martaban (the former on the river's southern bank and the latter to the opposite on the northern bank). Thereafter work on the railway consisted of maintenance, and repairs to damage caused by Allied bombing. Theatres of bamboo and attap (palm fronds) were built, sets, lighting, costumes and makeup devised, and an array of entertainment produced that included music halls, variety shows, cabarets, plays, and musical comedies even pantomimes. In October 1943, the railway station was finished. It gives a narrative and pictorial account of life in POW camps north of Australia during World War II. On 26 October 1942, British prisoners of war arrived at Tamarkan to construct the bridge. [6], In early 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma and seized control of the colony from the United Kingdom. WATCH VIDEO NOW : Captain (doctor) Peter Hendry - part 1: Prisoner of War Experiences. 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. [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. 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. 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 . They have no latrines. [14][15][16], The railway was completed ahead of schedule. [21], In October 1946, the Thai section of the line was sold to the Government of Thailand for 1,250,000 (50 million baht). 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. The Americans were called the Lost Battalion as their fate was unknown to the United States for more than two years after their capture. The Prisoner List: The Film A short film about prisoners of the Japanese in WWII based on the book by Richard Kandler About the book The above film, made by Kate Owen and Danny Roberts, is based on Richard Kandler's book: The Prisoner List: A true story of defeat, captivity and salvation in the Far East 1941-45. Donate to COFEPOW instantly - simply click on the button below. "[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. In due course the inevitable happened - a cholera epidemic broke out. Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. The second largest group of prisoners more than 2700 were captured on Java. The two parties met at Nieke in November 1943, and the line - 263 miles long - was completed by December. From late 1942 more than 13 000 Australians were sent from Singapore, Java and Timor to work on the ThaiBurma railway. The Australian commander Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Kappe attributed the lower Australian death rate to a more determined will to live, a higher sense of discipline, a particularly high appreciation of the importance of good sanitation, and a more natural adaptability to harsh conditions [and to] the splendid and unselfish services rendered by the medical personnel in the Force. Accommodation for the Japanese guards had to be built first, and at all the staging camps built subsequently along the railway this rule applied. Second, the occupation of Burma would also put Japanese armies on the doorstep of British India. He was one of Dunlop's 1,000 the men under commanding . The total length of miles, the total number of bridges over 600, including six to eight long-span bridges the total number of people who were involved (one-quarter of a million), the very short time in which they managed to accomplish it, and the extreme conditions they accomplished it under. From the inmates of Colditz to the men who took part in the 'Great Escape . Privacy Policy. With an enormous pool of captive labour at their disposal, the Japanese forced approximately 200,000 Asian conscripts and over 60,000 Allied POWs to construct the Burma Railway. Chungkai War Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, has a further 1,693 war graves. [45], The prisoners of war "found themselves at the bottom of a social system that was harsh, punitive, fanatical, and often deadly. June 27, 2022, 5:24 PM. THAILAND_POW_Camps_rosters (WO 361-2171) - Numerous rosters of POWs in Thailand. They were outnumbered by the British, the Dutch and large cohorts of Asian labourers (rmusha), particularly Burmese and Tamils from Malaya. Click Here To See Liberation Questionnaires. 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. Votes: 1,734. (Publisher) [40][41] Construction camps housing at least 1,000 workers each were established every 510 miles (817km) of the route. Object details Category Books Related period Second World War (content), Second World War (content) Creator BURMA-SIAM RAILWAY (Author) n.pub. 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. [100], A preserved section of line has been rebuilt at the National Memorial Arboretum in England.[101]. Khwae was frequently mispronounced by non-Thai speakers as kwai, or 'buffalo' in Thai). Over 60,000 prisoners worked on its construction, the majority of whom were British, and some 20% died before release in 1945. The Prisoner List. The full year membership runs from August to the end of July the following year. An Australian memorial is at Hellfire Pass. 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 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. Highlights. 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. 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. 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. From Thai-Burma railway to Sandakan, WWII history buff unearths stories of Australian POWs. It was built from 1940 to 1943 by civilian labourers impressed or recruited by the Japanese and prisoners of war taken by the Japanese, to supply troops and weapons in . [54][55], After the completion of the railroad, over 10,000 POWs were then transported to Japan. Burma Railway, also called Burma-Siam Railway, railway built during World War II connecting Bangkok and Moulmein (now Mawlamyine), Burma (Myanmar). Malaria, dysentery and pellagra (a vitamin deficiency disease) attacked the prisoners, and the number of sick in the camps was always high. Undoubtedly Australian POWs did display such qualities on the ThaiBurma railway and elsewhere. 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. Now they find themselves dumped in these charnel houses, driven and brutally knocked about by the Jap and Korean guards, unable to buy extra food, bewildered, sick, frightened. [38] The labourers that suffered the highest casualties were Burmese and Indian Tamils from Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as many Javanese.[30]. [61], Weight loss among Allied officers who worked on construction was, on average, 914kg (2030lb) less than that of enlisted personnel. 368 of the 1,061 on board the USS Houston survived. The list contains over 1700 names and is particularly interesting as a record of the decimation, by disease or untreated wounds, of prisoners working on the Burma-Thailand railway. 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. 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. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Burma-Railway, National Museum of Australia - BurmaThailand Railway, Government of South Australia - Veterans SA - The Completion of the Thai Burma Railway, Australian War Memorial - Stolen Years: Australian Prisoners of War. IWM collections, This media is not currently available. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation, and neglect. The British people were now resigned to the fact that Hitler had to be stopped by force. One factor was that many European and US doctors had little experience with tropical diseases. 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. The Burma- Death Railway. 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]. These men came from all over Australia though some battalions had strong regional roots. These pages are dedicated to my father Ken Heyes (Lance Corporal, 1st Aust Corps Troop Supply Column AIF, POW), his good friend, Ernie Badham and all the other brave soldiers who spent so many years in the hell-holes that were the Japanese P.O.W camps during World War II. About 60,000 were sent to work on the railway; 13,000 of them were Australian. Also sketches by POWs. This included personnel from USS Houston and the 131st Field Artillery Regiment of the Texas Army National Guard. [17] A holiday was declared for 25 October which was chosen as the ceremonial opening of the line. To these base hospitals desperately sick men - the weak supported by the less weak, since no fit men were allowed to accompany them - were evacuated from the camp hospitals, travelling by the haphazard means of hitch-hiking on a passing lorry or river barge. Corrections? The bulk of these forces were captured with the fall of Singapore, an event widely characterized as the worst military defeat in British history. Lt Col Coates the greatest doctor on the Burma Thailand Railway. All of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment."[20]. Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. Abstract. A railway route between Burma and Thailand, crossing Three Pagodas Pass and following the valley of the Khwae Noi river in Thailand, had been surveyed by the British government of Burma as early as 1885, but the proposed course of the line through hilly jungle terrain divided by many rivers was considered too difficult to undertake. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. 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 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. [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. The first contingent of around 3000 reached Thailand some months before the Australians in June 1942. description Object description. 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 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). While civilians were generally treated better than military prisoners, conditions in Japanese captivity were almost universally deplorable. Those who stayed behind were accommodated in camp "hospitals" which were simply one or more crude jungle huts. The remains of United States personnel were repatriated. 69 miles (111km) of the railway were in Burma and the remaining 189 miles (304km) were in Thailand. The Factors of Survival. [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. Army National Guard consisted of maintenance burma railway prisoners of war list and should be considered works of fiction which chosen! Force left Changi for Burma broke out which was chosen as the ceremonial of! Video now: Captain ( doctor ) Peter Hendry - part 1 Prisoner! The Lost Battalion as their fate was unknown to the end of July the following year for... Different from the northern half of the railway, 133 died with thatched.. 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