While civilians were generally treated better than military prisoners, conditions in Japanese captivity were almost universally deplorable. 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. THAILAND_POW_Camps_rosters (WO 361-2171) - Numerous rosters of POWs in Thailand. Conduct Unbecoming : The Story of the Murder of Canadian Prisoners of War in Normandy. Prisoners were made to work around the clock, with individual shifts lasting as long as 18 hours. Abstract. Some have even brought wives and children. Japanese soldiers, 12,000 of them, including 800 Koreans, were employed on the railway as engineers, guards, and supervisors of the POW and rmusha labourers. 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. 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. 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. Konkoita is approximately 263 kilometres north of Nong Pladuk (also known as Non Pladuk), or 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat. 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. Director: Jack Lee | Stars: Virginia McKenna, Peter Finch, Kenji Takaki, Tran Van Khe. On 26 October 1942, British prisoners of war arrived at Tamarkan to construct the bridge. The rail line was built along the Khwae Noi (Kwai) River valley to support the Japanese armed forces during the Burma Campaign. 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). These were men from the 7th Division who had been brought back from the Middle East to help defend the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) from the Japanese attack in early 1942. The full year membership runs from August to the end of July the following year. 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 . Burma-Siam Railway list of prisoner of war work camps in Thailand during the construction of the death railway, with diagram. Death Railway . 0 9 4 minutes read. After the railway was completed, the POWs still had almost two years to survive before liberation. 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. 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. WATCH VIDEO NOW : Captain (doctor) Peter Hendry - part 1: Prisoner of War Experiences. 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 At both camp and base hospitals, for the greater part of the time, the doctors had only such drugs and equipment as they had been able to carry with them. 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 Americans were called the Lost Battalion as their fate was unknown to the United States for more than two years after their capture. Thailand - Burma Railway. There are good reasons for this. Dancing Along the Deadline : The Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the Confederacy. Omissions? 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. [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. [63] The most important trial was against the general staff. 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. The living and working conditions on the railway were horrific. Surviving Australian veterans will attend a commemorative . [33] Other documents suggest that more than 100,000 Malayan Tamils were brought into the project and around 60,000 perished.[35][36]. April 1942 to October 1943. [8], The project aimed to connect Ban Pong in Thailand with Thanbyuzayat in Burma, linking up with existing railways at both places. 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. Of the 668 US personnel forced to work on the railway, 133 died. 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. 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. 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. The working conditions were appalling. Max Heiliger did a lot more then just laundering money for the Nazis. 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. The British POWs suffered the highest number of dead of any Allied group on the ThaiBurma railway. The final route was between Bangkok in Thailand and Rangoon, Myanmar (Burma). 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. Yet in relative terms, Australian POW deaths were very significant, accounting for around 20 per cent of all Australian deaths in World War II. This was to be over 400 Km long through inhospitable jungle and hills. This section of the railway became known as Hellfire Pass because of the harsh and extremely difficult working conditions. 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. Some of their works were used as evidence in the trials of Japanese war criminals. [7] The Japanese began this project in June 1942. When the Japanese conquered much of South East Asia in late 1941 and early 1942 they captured more than 50 000 British military personnel. (Supplied: Andrew Glynn) Families find long-lost answers [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. Between 180,000 and 250,000 Southeast Asian civilians and over 60,000 Allied prisoners of war were subjected to forced labour during its construction. Conditions were significantly worse than at Changi, with forced hard labour and severely inadequate supplies of food and medicines. Nearly 15 000 were captured on Singapore in February 1942 and over a thousand on each of Ambon, Dutch Timor, and New Britain. Initially, 1,000 prisoners worked on the bridge and were commanded by Colonel Philip Toosey. The bulk of these forces were captured with the fall of Singapore, an event widely characterized as the worst military defeat in British history. [38] The labourers that suffered the highest casualties were Burmese and Indian Tamils from Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as many Javanese.[30]. The majority of the army personnel were from the 8th Division. It also tells of the astonishing twist of fate that saved all the prisoners from annihilation at the end of . 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. Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. He served 11 years. Towards the end of the war there were also casualties from Allied bombing raids. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. [74] Repairs were carried out by forced labour of POWs shortly after and by April the wooden railroad trestle bridge was back in operation. 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. The only cover for the prisoners was that afforded by the flimsy bamboo and thatch huts, where they were made to shelter while the raids were in progress, and the inevitable casualties were heavy. When that failed to attract sufficient workers, they resorted to more coercive methods, rounding up workers and impressing them, especially in Malaya. In Saigon, the Brits accused Aussies of exaggerating conditions on 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. Download Ground News for free here: https://ground.news/megaprojectsSimo. In 1939 the age limits for enlistment in the AIF were 19 to 35 years of age (higher for officers and some NCOs). 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. Among the Allied POWs were some 30,000 British, 13,000 Australians, 18,000 Dutch, and 700 Americans. [17] A holiday was declared for 25 October which was chosen as the ceremonial opening of the line. Most of the railway was dismantled shortly after the war. The wooden bridge was reused for pedestrians and cars. 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. New options were needed to support the Japanese forces in the Burma Campaign, and an overland route offered the most direct alternative. 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