Burma Railway
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). It was built from 1940 to 1943 by South East Asian civilians abducted and forced to work by the Japanese and a smaller group of captured Allied soldiers, to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. The name used by the Japanese Government was Tai–Men Rensetsu Tetsudō (泰緬連接鉄道), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway.
This article is about the railway constructed by Japan during World War II. For the railways of the country Burma, see Rail transport in Myanmar.Burma Railway
Death Railway
Nam Tok Line
Siam–Burma Railway
Thai–Burma Railway
泰緬連接鉄道 (Japanese)
Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi–Thanbyuzayat
1942–1947
25 October 1943
Prisoners of war and civilian laborers
1 February 1947
1 July 1958 (Nong Pladuk–Nam Tok)
415 km (258 mi)
1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge[1]
At least 250,000 Southeast Asian civilians were subjected to forced labour to ensure the construction of the Death Railway and more than 90,000 civilians died building it, as did around 12,000 Allied soldiers. The workers on the Thai side of the railway were Tamils, Malays, and fewer Chinese civilians from Malaya. Possibly over 345,000 died while working, with the death rate per month rivaling that of Auschwitz.[2]
Most of these civilians were moved to ‘rest camps’ after October 1943, they remained in these camps after the end of the war as they watched the Allied POWs being evacuated. Survivors were still living in the camps in 1947. They were British subjects who, without access to food or medical care, continued to die of malaria, dysentery and malnutrition. They had survived the ordeal of the Railway only to die in the ‘rest camps’. No compensation or reparations have been provided to the Southeast Asian victims.[3][4][5]
Most of the railway was dismantled shortly after the war. Only the first 130 kilometres (81 mi) of the line in Thailand remained, with trains still running as far north as Nam Tok.
Labourers[edit]
Japanese[edit]
Japanese soldiers, 12,000 of them, including 800 Koreans, were employed on the railway as engineers, guards, and supervisors of the POW and civilian labourers. Although working conditions were far better for the Japanese than the POWs and civilian workers, about 1,000 (eight percent) of them died during construction. Many remember Japanese soldiers as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied military prisoners and the Southeast Asian civilians. Many men in the railway workforce bore the brunt of pitiless or uncaring guards. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation, and neglect.[36]
Notable accounts[edit]
Accounts of the construction include A Baba Boyhood: Growing up during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore by William Gwee Thian Hock and an anthology of the experiences of survivors in Revisiting the Death Railway: The Survivors’ Accounts by Sasidaran Sellappah. The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: A Social and Economic History by Paul H. Kratosk and The Thai Resistance Movement during the Second World War by Eiji Murashima provide a social and economic analysis of the railway's construction and its civilian builders. The book Through the Valley of the Kwai is an autobiography of British Army captain Ernest Gordon. Flanagan's 2013 book The Narrow Road to the Deep North centres on a group of Australian POWs and their experiences building the railway, and was awarded the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
Death Railway Interest Group (DRIG)[edit]
The Death Railway Interest Group (DRIG) is a Malaysian NGO that leads on the collection of Asian survivor accounts in Malaysia and Thailand, working to update records and presenting these at Australian and New-Zealand based humanitarian events.[94] DRIG aims to identify at least one mass grave along the railway and build a monument to the horrors these victims went through, as well as their surviving families.
DRIG led the development of a further memorial to the civilian labourers at Wat Tavorn Wararam, which manages the Wat Yuan Cemetery in Kanchanaburi, opened on 3 June 2023. This is in addition to the pagoda built over the remains of thousands of workers. The temple had undertaken the task of recovering the dead and burying them in the Wat Yuan Cemetery.[95]
Cultural impact and legacy[edit]
In 2017 the youth news and lifestyle platform of The Star (Malaysia) interviewed one of the last known Asian survivors in Surviving Thailand's infamous 'Death Railway': Arumugam Kandasamy
The motion picture The Railway Man (based on the book of the same name) gives the insight of a POW into the conditions inflicted upon the workers who built the railway. The 2001 film To End All Wars is based on the autobiography of British Army captain Ernest Gordon. The construction of the railway was the subject of a fictional award-winning 1957 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.
Michael Whitehall brought his son, comic Jack Whitehall, there in 2017 for the first season of Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father.