Built through the jungle under horrible conditions by the POW from England, Netherland, Australia and USA, the construction of the railroad track was complete in almost 1 year for an estimate work of 5 years.

STORY :

On the 7 december 1941 the Japanese launch their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and attacked Dutch and British positions in South East Asia on the same day. This lead to the captures of 140,000 prisoners, including Dutch, British, European, Australian and 36000 Americans from the Philippines.

Americans POW

After the end of the battle of the Philippines (8 May 1942), the Japanese sign an agreement with the thai government , the 8 August 1942, to build the railway of 415 km in order to complete the strategic supply line for soldiers and materials up to Burma to fight the British army.

The hellfire pass

THE WORKERS :

Dutch POW

They used more than 1/4 million workers. and 200,000 men died. So it’s more than the two Atomic bombs !

Commemorative plate at the border between Thailand and Burma

61700 Prisoners of war, 30,000 British, 18,000 Dutch, 13,000 Australian, 700 Americans, and during the monsoon in May 1943, the Japanese recruited 250,000 laborers , Burmese, Tamil, Chinese, Malay to help finish the railway who was put in service in October 1943.

Nearly 12,000 POW died, there were no records for Asians workers, but more than 150,000 have perished.

Well, I thought it will be nice to remember…

So we went to see the track closer, and found out that they were from USA. The USA supply Japan in Steel and oil until the embargo was established the 26 July 1941, and the Japanese already conducted a study about the railway project in 1939, it make sense that they stock the Carnegie tracks in advance ?

We took some photos of the commemorial plate of the 50 anniversary located at the three pagodas pass , and spend some time to pay tribute to all these brave men, who have done remarkable job, working 16hrs/day with heavy materials and tropical climate, under extreme conditions, tortures, malnutrition, food starving as punishment, the monsoon may to October , wounds infection with humidity, malaria, dengue fever, snakes, spiders, scorpions, many of the men died suffering because of poor medical care. The Japanese also gave hard punishment to their own soldiers.

Now

72 years ago...

AND AFTER :

They keep nearly 30,000 POW and workers to stay near the bridge to repair after the multiple bombings from the RAF and the USA, many prisoners died during the raids. The rest of the prisoners were sent to Japan by ship without any POW sign on it and some were sunk by submarines Allies , others died on the way for starvation or dehydration.

The road to the border used by Japanese as a takeoff runway

The Japanese use the railway during 21 months until June 1945.
The film from David Lean “ The Bridge over the kwai river “ is a good entertaining film but is far from the realty and was actually shoot in Ceylon Sri Lanka.
There are still survivors from this hell that were barely in their twenties at that time.

RIP

Have a great day

image source
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For the archive pictures, the other one are from us.