Second, the occupation of Burma would also put Japanese armies on the doorstep of British India. description Object description. New options were needed to support the Japanese forces in the Burma Campaign, and an overland route offered the most direct alternative. 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 . The British POWs suffered the highest number of dead of any Allied group on the ThaiBurma railway. [40][41] Construction camps housing at least 1,000 workers each were established every 510 miles (817km) of the route. In these camps entertainment flourished as an essential part of their rehabilitation. 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. More than one in five of them died there. The second largest group of prisoners more than 2700 were captured on Java. Contact our Media sales & Licensing team about access. The first cut at Konyu was approximately 1,500 feet (450 metres) long and 23 feet (7 metres) deep, and the second was approximately 250 feet (75 metres) long and 80 feet (25 metres) deep. Unbeknown to his captors, and at the risk of losing his life if discovered, he kept a diary documenting life. [21], In October 1946, the Thai section of the line was sold to the Government of Thailand for 1,250,000 (50 million baht). [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 Japanese wanted the railway completed as quickly as possible, and working units were comprised of massive numbers of prisoners scattered over the entire length of the proposed route. This video is sponsored by Ground News - The world's first news comparison platform. The full year membership runs from August to the end of July the following year. The Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, the Siam-Burma Railway, the Thai-Burma Railway and similar names, was a railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma, built by the Empire of Japan in 1943 to support its forces in the Burma campaign of World War II. Most of the prisoners of the Japanese were Australian Army about 21 000. 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. [34] Approximately 90,000 Burmese and 75,000 Malayans worked on the railroad. 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 . [7] The Japanese began this project in June 1942. It also describes the living and working conditions experienced by the POWs, together with the culture of the Thai towns and countryside that became many POWs' homes after leaving Singapore with the working parties sent to the railway. When Britainwent to waron 3 September 1939 there was none of the 'flag-waving patriotism' of August 1914. 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. Those who stayed behind were accommodated in camp "hospitals" which were simply one or more crude jungle huts. Max Heiliger did a lot more then just laundering money for the Nazis. Conditions were significantly worse than at Changi, with forced hard labour and severely inadequate supplies of food and medicines. Only the first 130 kilometres (81mi) of the line in Thailand remained, with trains still running as far north as Nam Tok. BBC News Bob Reynolds spent four years as a prisoner of war in Burma and Taiwan. [39] More prisoners of war were imported from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies as construction advanced. During its construction more than 16 ,000 prisoners of war died - mainly of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion - and were buried along the railway. 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. Death Railway . Some have even brought wives and children. The quality of medical care received by different groups of prisoners varied enormously. Williams Force was based at Tanyin and Black Force at Beke Taung camp at Kilo 40. [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]. [23][24] The money was used to compensate neighbouring countries and colonies for material stolen by Japan during the construction of the railway. Approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. Click Here To See Liberation Questionnaires. 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. Nearly 15 000 were captured on Singapore in February 1942 and over a thousand on each of Ambon, Dutch Timor, and New Britain. 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. Download Ground News for free here: https://ground.news/megaprojectsSimo. Altogether, some 35,000 parachute and glider troops were involved in the operation. [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. Dutch chemist Van Boxtell. Burma-Siam Railway 1942-1945, Second World War. 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. 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. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. More than one in five of them died there. Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. 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. Although it was often possible to supplement this diet by purchases from the local civilian population, men sometimes had to live for weeks on little more than a small daily ration of rice flavoured with salt. 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. From British mathematician Arthur Thomas Doodson's Tide-prediction machine, and PLUTO (short for 'pipeline under the ocean' - supplied petrol from Britain to Europe), to the German's 'Rommel's Asparagus', discover 7 clever innovations used on D-Day. Thailand - Burma Railway. Some 30 000 of these prisoners of war later worked on the ThaiBurma railway. 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. Subcategories Grid List There are 23 products. The Japanese Army transported 500,000 tonnes of freight[citation needed] over the railway before it fell into Allied hands. Stolen banknotes and jewelry along with Holocaust victims' dental gold, wedding rings, and even scrap gold melted down from spectacles-frames flooded into the Max Heiliger accounts, completely filling several bank vaults by 1942. 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. Prisoners of War 330,000 people worked on building the railway, including 250,000 Asian laborers and 61,000 prisoners of war (POWs). As well as these deaths, Japanese civilians were nearly 10,000 lost at sea in this attack and Australia lost about 2800 soldiers to American operations. 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. 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. Nearly all our Australian POW Books are true stories many written by the Australian POW who worked on the Thai Burma Railway during WW2. Japanese Medical Orderly. [73], The two bridges were successfully bombed and damaged on 13 February 1945 by bomber aircraft from the Royal Air Force (RAF). 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. Ron Arad Israeli fighter pilot, shot down over Lebanon in 1986. . 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). Chungkai War Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, has a further 1,693 war graves. Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. When the Japanese conquered much of South East Asia in late 1941 and early 1942 they captured more than 50 000 British military personnel. More than 12,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and tens of thousands of forced labourers perished during its construction. [8], The project aimed to connect Ban Pong in Thailand with Thanbyuzayat in Burma, linking up with existing railways at both places. 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. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, especially after the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Those who have no known grave are commemorated by name on memorials elsewhere; the land forces on either the Rangoon Memorial or the Singapore Memorial and the naval casualties on memorials at the manning ports. 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. 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. Burma-Siam Railway list of prisoner of war work camps in Thailand during the construction of the death railway, with diagram. He served 11 years. [62], Workers in more isolated areas suffered a much higher death rate than did others. 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. [53], The construction of the Burma Railway is counted as a war crime committed by Japan in Asia. Many men in the railway workforce bore the brunt of pitiless or uncaring guards. The name Changi is synonymous with the suffering of Australian prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War. [6], In early 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma and seized control of the colony from the United Kingdom. Corrections? The two parties met at Nieke in November 1943, and the line - 263 miles long - was completed by December. 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. Coast also details the camaraderie, pastimes, and humour of the POWs in the face of adversity.[47]. In contrast, only 4000 Australians were captured by the Germans and Ottomans in World War I. Java was the place where the second largest group of Australians was captured. [100], A preserved section of line has been rebuilt at the National Memorial Arboretum in England.[101]. This gave rise to the name of "River Kwai" in English. However, the film and book contain many historical inaccuracies, and should be considered works of fiction. From the inmates of Colditz to the men who took part in the 'Great Escape . The 'Market Garden' plan employed all three divisions of First Allied Airborne Army. Frequently men were sent to work on the line long before their accommodation was completed. by Howard Margolian. Powered by WordPress. Australian POW Prisoners of War Books about Thai Burma Railway Hellfire Pass Military Books DVD Docos. Show more. 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 cook-house and huts for the working parties came next and accommodation for the sick last of all. They were treated brutally by the Japanese, and struggled with tropical diseases and the effects of malnutrition. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The rail line was built along the Khwae Noi (Kwai) River valley to support the Japanese armed forces during the Burma Campaign. 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. Lieutenant General Eiguma Ishida, overall commander of the Burma Railway, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Parts of the abandoned route have been converted into a walking trail.[28]. Two hundred men were housed in each barracks, giving each man a two-foot wide space in which to live and sleep. They were outnumbered by the British, the Dutch and large cohorts of Asian labourers (rmusha), particularly Burmese and Tamils from Malaya. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Estimates vary but the number who worked on the railway was possibly as high as 18 000. On 16 January 1946, the British ordered Japanese POWs to remove a four kilometre stretch of rail between Nikki (Ni Thea) and Sonkrai. My Dad is not with us to tell his own story although he did keep a diary . Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association, Remembering the sufferings of POW's on the Burma-Thai Railway. The name used by the Japanese Government was TaiMen Rensetsu Tetsud (), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway. Much of the excavation was carried out with inadequate hand tools, and, because work on the railway had fallen behind schedule, the pace of work was increased. 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 youth of many Australian prisoners of war was very evident and many enlisted at an age younger than 20. 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. [13], Estimates of deaths among Southeast Asian civilians subject to forced labour, often known as rmusha, vary widely, because statistics are incomplete and fragmented. 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. Memorial sites along the route of the railway include the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, where nearly 7,000 Allied dead are interred, and . 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. 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. 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. [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. The railway has been purchased by the Thai Government from its starting point at Ban Pong to the Burmese border, and it is now part of the Royal State railways. In October 1943, the railway station was finished. During this time, prisoners suffered from disease, malnutrition, and cruel forms of punishment and torture inflicted by the Japanese. By far the majority of British POWs nearly 29 000 of them were sent to Thailand. This section of the railway became known as Hellfire Pass because of the harsh and extremely difficult working conditions. [56] Those left to maintain the line still suffered from appalling living conditions as well as increasing Allied air raids. 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. [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. 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. (Supplied: Andrew Glynn) Families find long-lost answers However, it is known that all of them had volunteered to serve. One factor was that many European and US doctors had little experience with tropical diseases. [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. 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. Human hair was often used for brushes, plant juices and blood for paint, and toilet paper as the "canvas". 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. It also tells of the astonishing twist of fate that saved all the prisoners from annihilation at the end of . Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II, RG 331. The Prisoner List. 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. "[46] The living and working conditions on the Burma Railway were often described as "horrific", with maltreatment, sickness, and starvation. Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}140227N 993011E / 14.04083N 99.50306E / 14.04083; 99.50306, This article is about the railway constructed by Japan during World War II. Photocopy. Yet in relative terms, Australian POW deaths were very significant, accounting for around 20 per cent of all Australian deaths in World War II. The barracks were about 60m (66yd) long with sleeping platforms raised above the ground on each side of an earthen floor. 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. The remaining sailors and marines, including Marvin Sizemore, were captured by the Japanese and found themselves building the Burma - Thailand railway as prisoners of war. Another cohort of 450 US personnel suffered 100 deaths. Railway Construction Camp - Kanya, Thailand. Director: Jack Lee | Stars: Virginia McKenna, Peter Finch, Kenji Takaki, Tran Van Khe. 368 of the 1,061 on board the USS Houston survived. Listed under D-Day - The Normandy Invasion. Some 30 000 of these prisoners of war later worked on the Thai-Burma railway. RM 2CYBAYN - Military personnel and people attend a dawn memorial service for soldiers who died during World War Two on ANZAC Day at Hellfire Pass in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand, April 25, 2015. In his book Last Man Out, H. Robert Charles, an American Marine survivor of the sinking of the USS Houston, writes in depth about a Dutch doctor, Henri Hekking, a fellow POW who probably saved the lives of many who worked on the railway. Prisoners were made to work around the clock, with individual shifts lasting as long as 18 hours. In mid-1942, large numbers of POWs began to be transported to Thailand and Burma for the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway. The vast majority of the men of the 2nd AIF were of European descent. best argireline serum, robinson funeral home rock hill, sc obituaries, chop pediatric residency, ) long with sleeping platforms raised above the Ground on each side of an earthen floor wide space in to... 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