Thailand

The Bridge On The River Kwai

In June 1942, 61,000 British, Australian, American, New Zealand, Danish and Dutch POWs as well as an estimated 200,000 labourers from India, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma and Thailand were put to work by the Japanese Imperial Army to construct a railway line 415km long to link Kanchanaburi to the Japanese Base Camp in Thanbyuzayat in Burma, thus ensuring a direct line from Singapore through Malaya and Thailand to link up with the railway network in Burma. Apart from supplying their bases in Burma, the Japanese had also planned to use the railway to launch an attack on India.

The decision to build the railway was made by The Japanese Cabinet following the decisive defeat of its navy at Battle of Midway in June 1942. At that time a large Japanese army was based in Burma and another in New Guinea and adjacent island. Both depended for support and supplies on the navy which after Midway no longer enjoyed its former supermacy. The Japanese were aware that the British had surveyed a proposed railway linking Burma and Thailand in 1910 and that they had abandoned the project in 1912 because of difficult terrain, endemic diseases and high monsoonal rainfall. To planners studying the map in Tokyo howerver, the construction of a 415 kilometre railway seemed an obvious solution to supplying the army in Burma and thus void the hazardous sea route around Singapore and though the Straits of Malacca.

Accordingly two Japanese railway regiments to talling 12,000 man were assigned to railway project the 5 Regiment to be based at Thanbyzayat in Burma and the 9 Regiment at Kanchanaburi in Thailand. The deadline for completion of the railway was August 1943 and in June 1942 the Japanese beban moving prisoners of the war to Burma and Thailand. Construction of the railway began on the 16the of September 1942. First estimates by the Japanese engineers suggested that it would take at least five years to build, but under tremendous pressure, the POWs were forced short span of 12 months and to complete in 16 months. On the 25 December 1943 the "Railway of Death" was completed. The total workforce to be employed on the railway included some 61,000 British, Dutch and Amarican, Australians prisoners of war and over 200,000 conscripted Asian labourers.

The effect was devastating. 16,000 allied prisoners of war lost their lives when this railway was built during dying together with 100,000 slave Asian labourers who aren't mentioned all that often. After all, there are lost of Indians and Chinese. The "Railway of Death" left such a gruesome number of bodies in its track, in stark contrast to the number of wooden sleepers supporting the tracks themselves. All the same, every kilometre of railway track cost the lives of 38 allies. Just like when Dad as a lad.

The "Railway of Death" was built as a strategic railway between Thailand and Burma. 263 kilometres in Thailand and 152 kilometres in Burma. Later the Thais and the Burmese agreed to destroy the tracks from their common border and 100 kilometres into each country.

Those who built but never rode the "Railway of Death".

 

A British force of almost 85,000 men surrendered lock, stock and barrel to about 25,000 Japanese veterans of the war in China. British war leader Winston Churchill called the fall of Singapore his country's most crushing military defeat in history, but for Japan it was the Zenith of military success.

With the fall of Singapore, Japan captured not a large work force but also invaluable equipment and machinery, including more than 300 locomotives, thousands of bogeys and hundreds of kilometres of track.

The Japanese High Command was forced to accept that naval superiority in the Pacific had become unattainable. This realization led directly to the birth of the Siam-Burma railway as a vital alternative to supply the Japanese army in Burma. It is not hard to understand the wider strategic attractions to Japan's military planners. The line would connect Singapore, Hanoi and Rangoon and, if the Siam-Burma stretch could be achieved, why not continue with a Burma-India track to connect with the vast Indian railway network stretching to what is now the Pakistan-Iranian border.

 

Japan's plan to link Bangkok and Rangoon by rail in 1942 was not new; the British had surveyed the route at the turn of century, but abandoned the idea as impracticable. But for the Japanese, well aware of the heavy price they would pay if they were defeated after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, no cost was too high for victory.

Construction of the Burma-Thailand railway began at both ends simulaneously using British, Australian, American, Canadian, New Zealand and Dutch prisoners of war in addition to some 200,000 Asian slave workers - the Japanese called them romusha - rounded up in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, Vietnam and India. The French in Indochina came to a "diplomatic understanding" with the Japanese invaders and so were spared the horror of working on the Death Railway.

The first batch of allied prisoners was sent from Changi Prison in Singapore to Thailand on 19 June 1942. After a tortuous closed carriage train ride form Singapore to Thailand, Corporal Trevor Dakin of the 5th battalion Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire regiment, found himself one of thousands of allied prisoners of war assigned to the life-sapping task of building the Death Railway.

Of the 68,000 allied prisoners who toiled on the railway, 16,000 died while of the estimated 300,000 Asian slave workers more than100,000 are believed to have perished. The exact number of Asian workers who died while working for Japan's Labour Service Corps in the second world war may never be known; the Imperial Japanese army destroyed records at the end of the war.

 

After the railway was completed, the work force was split into three groups. Those judged as being the fittest, boarded slow Japanese merchant vessels for the treacherous sea voyage to Japan, where they were to work in coal mines. But of the 10,000 men sent to Japan, as many as 3,000 are believed to have drowned at sea when the ships they were sailing on were sunk by US and British submarines. Former British POW Arthur Peddie was one such POW sent to Japan who survived the perilous journey and live to see the mushroom could of the atomic bomb standing like a ghost over Nagaski, in April 1945. Those in the second group were considered fit enough to be retained on the railway as maintenance crew. Up to a hundred of these men perished in the allied bombing raids against the railway and bridges across the River Kwai. Trevor Dakin was orginally selected for Japan, but sudden illness ruled him out. He says life on the line at this stage was almost bearable. The third group of POWs were considered by the Japanese to be too sick to be effective laboures and were sent back to Changi Prison in Singapore.

Fails to mention that not one but two bridges spaned the River Kwai in the Second World War. The original wooden bridge, was completed in February 1943 and the first train crossed the 11-span steel and concrete bridge seen today in June of the same year.

The service bridge was finally destroyed on 2 April 1945 by B24 bombardier Lt-Col Bill Henderson.

After the railway was completed, the work force was split into three groups. Those judged as being the fittest were sent to Japan. Those in the second group were considered fit enough to be retained on the railway as maintenance crew. While the third group of POWs were considered by the Japanese to be too sick to be effective labourers and were sent back to Changi Prison in Singapore. Chick Warden of Sydney, Australia stumbled into Changi as a walking skeleton before collapsing in his friend's arms.

 

The eleven span steel bridge spanning the Kwai Yai river. Dismantled by the Japanese in Java and transported to the site in 1942, the bridge was rebuilt using prisoner of war (POW) labour, and opened in April 1943. One span of the bridge was destroyed by Allied aircraft in mid February 1945.

'Donlop Force' consisted of 878 Australians the command of Lieutenant Colnel E.E. Dunlop AAMC. They departed form Java for Singapore on 4 January 1943 and from Singapore by train on 20 January, arriving at Banpong four days later. From Banpong they went on the the Konyu area where there were some 3,000 British troops already showing signs of complete breakdown form semi-starvation, disease and overwork. Here a group of some 600 Dutch prisoners also came under Dunlop's command and after two weeks of sleeping in the open the whole force moved to Hintok Rond camp over three kilometres form the river. At the end of March 1943 the first of 'D' force had begun to arrive in the area and part of it brought the strength of Hintok camp to about 1,000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Done