Burma Railway

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Map of the Burma Railway

The Burma Railway, also known also as the Death Railway, the Thailand-Burma Railway and similar names, is a 415 km (258 mile) railway between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.

Forced labour was used in its construction. About 180,000 Asian labourers and 100,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) worked on the railway. Of these, around 90,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died as a direct result of the project. The dead POWs included 6,318 British personnel, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch, about 356 Americans and some Canadians.^[1]

1 History
- 1.1 Post-war
2 The people who built the Burma Railway
3 Notes
4 Book references
5 Maps
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] History

A railway route between Thailand and Burma had been surveyed at the beginning of the 20th century, by the British government of Burma, but the proposed course of the line — through hilly jungle terrain divided by many rivers — was considered too difficult to complete.

In 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma from Thailand and conquered it from Britain. To maintain their forces in Burma, the Japanese had to bring supplies and troops to Burma by sea, through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, and a different means of transport was needed. The obvious alternative was a railway. The Japanese started the project in June 1942.

They intended to connect Ban Pong with Thanbyuzayat, through the Three Pagodas Pass. Construction started at the Thai end on 22 June 1942 and in Burma at roughly the same time. Most of the construction materials for the line, including tracks and sleepers, were brought from dismantled branches of the Federated States of Malaya Railways network and from the Netherlands East Indies.

On 17 October 1943, the two sections of the line met about 18 km south of the Three Pagodas Pass at Konkuita (Kaeng Khoi Tha), Sangkhla Buri district, Kanchanaburi Province). Most of the POWs were then transferred to Japan. Those left to maintain the line still suffered from the appalling living conditions as well as Allied air raids.

The most famous portion of the railway is probably Bridge 277 over the Khwae Yai River (Thai แควใหญ่, English "big tributary"). (The river was originally known as the Mae Klong and was renamed Khwae Yai in 1960.) It was immortalized by Pierre Boulle in his book and the film based on it: The Bridge on the River Kwai. However, there are many who say that the movie is utterly unrealistic and does not show what the conditions and treatment of prisoners was really like.[1] The first wooden bridge over the Khwae Noi (Thai แควน้อย, English "small tributary") was finished in February 1943, followed by a concrete and steel bridge in June 1943. The Allies made several attempts to destroy the bridges, but succeeded only in damaging them in their first attempts. On 2 April 1945, AZON bomber crews from the U.S. 458th Heavy Bombardment Group destroyed Bridge 277. After the war, two squarish central sections were made in Japan to repair the bridge, and were donated to Thailand.

Along the Death Railway today, River Khwae on the left

Train on the Death Railway

[edit] Post-war

After the war the railway was in too poor a state to be used for the civil Thai railway system, and needed heavy reconstruction. On 24 June 1949, the first part from Kanchanaburi to Nong Pladuk (Thai หนองปลาดุก) was finished; on 1 April 1952, the next section up to Wang Pho (Wangpo); and finally on 1 July 1958, up to Nam Tok (Thai น้ำตก, English "waterfalls".) The portion of the railway still in use measures about 130 km. Beyond Nam Tok, the line has been abandoned. Steel rails have been removed for reuse in expanding the Bangsue railway yard, reinforcing the BKK-Banphachi double track, rehabilitating the track from Thung Song to Trang, and constructing both the Nong Pladuk-Suphanburi and Ban Thung Pho-Khirirat Nikhom branch lines. Parts of it have been converted into a walking trail.

Since the 1990s there have been plans to rebuild the complete railway, but these plans have not yet come to fruition.

[edit] The people who built the Burma Railway

[edit] Conditions during construction

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The living and working conditions on the railway were horrific. The estimated total number of civilian labourers and POWs who died during construction is about 160,000. About 25% of the POW workers died because of overwork, malnutrition, and diseases like cholera, malaria, and dysentery. The death rate of the Asian civilian workers was even higher; the number who died is unknown, as the Japanese did not count them.

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 Pakanbaroe to Moeara.

The construction of the Burma Railway is only one of many major war crimes committed by Japan in Asia during the war. It is regarded as a major event in the "Asian Holocaust", during which millions of civilians and POWs were killed by Japanese personnel.

[edit] Cemeteries and memorials

The graves of the people who died a brutal death were transferred from camp burial grounds and solitary sites along the railway to three war cemeteries after the war, except for Americans, who were repatriated. The main POW cemetery is in the city of Kanchanaburi, where 6,982 POWs are buried, mostly British, Australian, Dutch and Canadians. A smaller cemetery a bit farther outside city is Chung Kai with 1,750 graves. At Thanbyuzayat in Myanmar there are some 3,800 burials of POWs who died on the northern part of the line, to Nieke. The three cemeteries are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

There are several museums dedicated to those who lost their lives constructing the railway, the largest of which is at Hellfire Pass (north of the current terminus at Nam Tok), a cutting where the greatest number of lives were lost. There is also an Australian memorial at Hellfire Pass.

Two other museums are in Kanchanaburi, the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum (opened in March 2003), and the JEATH War Museum.

At the Khwae bridge there is a memorial plaque and a historic locomotive is on display.

A preserved section of line is at the National Memorial Arboretum, in England.

[edit] Prominent people who helped build the line

Sir Ernest Edward "Weary" Dunlop, Australian surgeon renowned for his leadership of POWs on the railway
Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards, Australian soldier who survived crucifixion at the hands of Japanese soldiers while working on the line
Frank Pantridge, British physician
Philip Toosey, Senior Allied officer at the Bridge on the River Kwai
R.M. Hare, philosopher

[edit] Notes

^ Wigmore, p. 588)

[edit] Book references

Blair, Clay, Jr.; Joan Blair (1979). Return from the River Kwai. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Boulle, Pierre (1954). Bridge on the River Kwai. London: Secker & Warburg.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission (2000). The Burma-Siam Railway and its Cemeteries. England: Information sheet.
Davies, Peter N. (1991). The Man Behind the Bridge: Colonel Toosey and the River Kwai. London: Athlone Press.
Daws, Gavan (1994). Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific. New York: William Morrow & Co..
Dunlop, E. E. (1986). The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop: Java and the Burma-Thailand Railway. Ringwood, Victoria, Aus: Penguin Books.
Gordon, Ernest (1962). Through the Valley of the Kwai: From Death-Camp Despair to Spiritual Triumph. New York: Harper & Bros..
Gordon, Ernest (2002). To End all Wars. HarperCollins. ISBN 0007118481.
Hardie, Robert (1983). The Burma-Siam Railway: The Secret Diary of Dr. Robert Hardie, 1942-1945. London: Imperial War Museum.
Henderson, W. (1991). From China Burma India to the Kwai. Waco, Texas, USA: Texian Press.
Hornfischer, James D. (2006). Ship of Ghosts. New York: Bantam. ISBN 978-0-553-38450-5.
Kinvig, Clifford (1992). River Kwai Railway: The Story of the Burma-Siam Railway. London: Brassey’s. ISBN 0-08-037344-5.
La Forte, Robert S. (1993). Building the Death Railway: The Ordeal of American POWs in Burma. Wilmington, Delaware, USA: SR Books.
Latimer, Jon (2004). Burma: The Forgotten War. London: John Murray.
Lomax, Eric (1995). The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness. New York: W. W. Norton.
MacArthur, Brian (2005). Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East, 1942-1945. New York: Random House.
Rees, Laurence (2001). Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II. Boston: Da Capo Press.
Reminick, Gerald (2002). Death's Railway: A Merchant Mariner on the River Kwai. Palo Alto, CA, USA: Glencannon Press.
Reynolds, E. Bruce (2005). Thailand's Secret War: The Free Thai, OSS, and SOE During World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, Rowley; Marcia McEwan (1989). The Survival Factor. Sydney: Kangaroo Press. ISBN 086417246X.
Searle, Ronald (1986). To the Kwai and Back: War Drawings. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Teel, Horace G. (1978). Our Days Were Years: History of the "Lost Battalion," 2nd Battalion, 36th Division. Quanah, TX, USA: Nortex Press.
Thompson, Kyle (1994). A Thousand Cups of Rice: Surviving the Death Railway. Austin, TX, USA: Eakin Press.
Velmans, Loet (2003). Long Way Back to the River Kwai: Memories of World War II. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Webster, Donovan (2003). The Burma Road: The Epic Story of the China-Burma-India Theater in World War II. New York: Straus & Giroux.
Wigmore, Lionel (1957). The Japanese Thrust - Australia in the War of 1939-1945. Canberra: Australian War Memorial.