South Australian Rex Butler's time as a hard-riding buffalo shooter in the Northern Territory's crocodile swamps stood him in good stead when he went to war, fell into the hands of the Japanese and made an incredible escape. Contact our Media sales & Licensing team about access. 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. Vegetables and other perishables long in transit arrived rotten. 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. 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. The full year membership runs from August to the end of July the following year. 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. Frequently men were sent to work on the line long before their accommodation was completed. Download Ground News for free here: https://ground.news/megaprojectsSimo. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The first train to pass Konkoita on the newly constructed Burma-Thailand railway, built for the Japanese by prisoner of war (POW) labour. A lower death rate among Dutch POWs and internees, relative to those from the UK and Australia, has been linked to the fact that many personnel and civilians taken prisoner in the Dutch East Indies had been born there, were long-term residents and/or had Eurasian ancestry; they tended thus to be more resistant to tropical diseases and to be better acclimatized than other Western Allied personnel. 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. 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 . [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). [17] A holiday was declared for 25 October which was chosen as the ceremonial opening of the line. IWM collections, This media is not currently available. Memorial sites along the route of the railway include the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, where nearly 7,000 Allied dead are interred, and . [59], Several museums are dedicated to those who perished building the railway. Taff suffered from dysentery, malaria, beri beri and cholera but, unlike so many, he survived. A second air-raid by the RAF on 24 June finally severely damaged and destroyed the railroad bridges, and put the entire railway line out of commission for the rest of the war. 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. George, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was a POW in Java in 1942. 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 name Changi is synonymous with the suffering of Australian prisoners of the Japanese during the Second World War. Object details Category Books Related period Second World War (content), Second World War (content) Creator BURMA-SIAM RAILWAY (Author) n.pub. [3][4] Thailand was forced to accept an alliance,[5] and was used as a staging point for the attack on Singapore. Only the first 130 kilometres (81mi) of the line in Thailand remained, with trains still running as far north as Nam Tok. Director Jonathan Teplitzky Writers Frank Cottrell Boyce (screenplay) Andy Paterson (screenplay) Eric Lomax (book) Stars 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. The railway was to run 420 kilometres through rugged jungle. Map of Prisoner of War Camps. 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. Neither drugs or surgical instruments were supplied by the Japanese, and although later on certain medical supplies were made available they were always 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. In the War Cemetery at Thanbyuzayat in Burma lie those from the northern half of the line. 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. 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. by Ezra Hoyt Ripple (Editor), Mark A. Snell (Editor) Hardcover - 168 pages. His account of the conditions and suffering endured by his fellow prisoners and himself makes for the most extraordinary and disturbing reading. 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. 368 of the 1,061 on board the USS Houston survived. 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. They were treated brutally by the Japanese, and struggled with tropical diseases and the effects of malnutrition. ", "Yamashita: the greatest Japanese general of World War II? [18][19] The Japanese staff would travel by train C56 31 from Nong Pladuk, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma. At main camps such as Chungkai, Tamarkan, Non Pladuk and Thanbyuzayat were "base Hospitals" which were also huts of bamboo and thatch, staffed by such medical officers and orderlies as were allowed by the Japanese to care for the sick prisoners. 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). More commonly called the Burma or Thai-Burma Railway, it was a major project during Allied Far East imprisonment under the Japanese. 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. [74] Repairs were carried out by forced labour of POWs shortly after and by April the wooden railroad trestle bridge was back in operation. Tens of thousands of POWs were packed onto vessels that came to be known as Hell ships; one in five prisoners did not survive the cramped, disease-ridden journey. Burma was a key strategic objective for the Japanese for two reasons. Many remember Japanese soldiers as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war and the Asian rmusha. 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. When the Japanese conquered much of South East Asia in late 1941 and early 1942 they captured more than 50 000 British military personnel. 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. [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. Nearly all our Australian POW Books are true stories many written by the Australian POW who worked on the Thai Burma Railway during WW2. 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. Many are now held by the Australian War Memorial, State Library of Victoria, and the Imperial War Museum in London. [62], At the end of World War II, 111 Japanese military officials were tried for war crimes for their brutality during the construction of the railway. 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 Japanese Army transported 500,000 tonnes of freight[citation needed] over the railway before it fell into Allied hands. Williams Force was based at Tanyin and Black Force at Beke Taung camp at Kilo 40. From late 1942 more than 13 000 Australians were sent from Singapore, Java and Timor to work 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. 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. Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. A newly wealthy English woman returns to Malaya to build a well for the villagers who helped her during war. The remains of the notorious F-Force camp in Thailand. 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). Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, at Thanbyuzayat, 65 kilometres south of Moulmein, Myanmar (Burma) has the graves of 3,617 POWs who died on the Burmese portion of the line. [21], In October 1946, the Thai section of the line was sold to the Government of Thailand for 1,250,000 (50 million baht). [56] Those left to maintain the line still suffered from appalling living conditions as well as increasing Allied air raids. 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. The majority of the army personnel were from the 8th Division. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. BBC News Bob Reynolds spent four years as a prisoner of war in Burma and Taiwan. The Burma Railway was also known as the "Death Railway" as 16,000 allied troops and 100,000 Asian labourers died during its construction. 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 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. Camps were usually named after the kilometre where they were located. Source 4 - Sleepers Map of the Thai-Burma Railway Sleepers from Hellfire Pass Source 1 - The Wreaths Throughout the building of the railway, food supplies were irregular and totally inadequate. Click Here To See Liberation Questionnaires. 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. 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. About 60,000 were sent to work on the railway; 13,000 of them were Australian. Includes Changi, the Burma-Thailand Railway, Sandakan, Timor, Ambon, Rabaul and Japan, and the prisoners who died . CHAPTER 2. Towards the end of the war there were also casualties from Allied bombing raids. 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. 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. Repeated reconnaissance flights over the Burma end of the railway started early in 1943, followed by bombings at intervals. 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. June 27, 2022, 5:24 PM. Chungkai War Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, has a further 1,693 war graves. Updates? Articles on the Australian medical personnel working on the railway. Show more. Coast also details the camaraderie, pastimes, and humour of the POWs in the face of adversity.[47]. A large number of the British and Australian captives were sent to Burma (Myanmar). Extracts from a report on a search carried out by an officer of the Army Graves Service, 6th to 22nd December 1948. Powered by WordPress. 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. 0 9 4 minutes read. These coolies have been brought from Malaya under false pretenses 'easy work, good pay, good houses!' The Burmese had welcomed the invasion by Japan and cooperated with Japan in recruiting workers. It is also the case that Australians distinctive national characteristics did not give them a greater chance of survival, as is sometimes assumed. 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. In Burma. BURMA-04_roster (WO 361-2204) - British and American POWs at Burma Camp 6, later IV. Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. [66][67] No compensation or reparations have been provided to Southeast Asian victims. 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. Some 30 000 of these prisoners of war later worked on the ThaiBurma railway. [7] The Japanese began this project in June 1942. 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. [13], Estimates of deaths among Southeast Asian civilians subject to forced labour, often known as rmusha, vary widely, because statistics are incomplete and fragmented. 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). 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. Some workers were attracted by the relatively high wages, but the working conditions for the rmusha were deadly. The Japanese stopped all work on . On 16 January 1946, the British ordered Japanese POWs to remove a four kilometre stretch of rail between Nikki (Ni Thea) and Sonkrai. [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]. Nearly 15 000 were captured on Singapore in February 1942 and over a thousand on each of Ambon, Dutch Timor, and New Britain. 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. Dancing Along the Deadline : The Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the Confederacy. Since the 1990s various proposals have been made to rebuild the complete railway, but as of 2021[update] these plans had not been realised. 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. Hekking died in 1994. 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. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also . The construction of the railway is a heartbreaking story of forced labor, with more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war . The second largest group of prisoners more than 2700 were captured on Java. 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