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Thailand-Burma Railway Centre Museum in Kanchanaburi There’s also a museum where many more stories and information are available. Visitors can walk along the old railway track through Hellfire Pass. These days, that part of the Burma Railway has fallen into disuse. You only have to look at the excavated rocks to get a sense of the desperation and madness. Only 300 of the 1,000 men employed survived this merciless regimen. Hundreds of men died from cholera, infections, injuries, exhaustion and other diseases. 96 men were bludgeoned to death by the Japanese guards. The shadows of the Japanese and the POWs that became visible on the rock face were said to resemble a scene from hell, which is where the name comes from.Īnd hell it surely was. The POWs sometimes worked 18 hours a day and had to keep working until deep in the night, when diesel soaked torches and oil lamps would have to be lit. Hellfire Pass was a mountain range along the Burma Railway track that had to be excavated. The breakneck speed with which the construction was completed wasn’t thought possible by anybody beforehand.Īs mentioned before, the terrain was mountainous, which meant that 99% of all the hard labor had to be done manually. Its estimated that 90,000 of the laborers and about 16,000 prisoners lost their lives building the Burma Railway, either through disease, malnutrition, exhaustion or abuse. These POWs, day after day, have their bodies pushed to extremes in an effort to complete the construction of the railway. The Japanese decided to use prisoners of war and civilians to carry out the construction of this vast project.ģ30,000 people worked on building the railway, including 250,000 Asian laborers and 61,000 prisoners of war (POWs). The British had been toying with the idea of this railway for decades, but construction was never realized due to the rough, mountainous terrain and the tropical climate. The Japanese now needed a safer supply route between Burma (Myanmar) and Siam (Thailand), which is why in June 1942 they started construction on a railway line of 258 miles (415 kilometers) connecting both countries: the Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway.īesides a supply line, the construction of the Railway would also establish a strategically important link to India. After heavy fighting the Japanese defeat the British and seize Singapore in 1942. But after having visited The Bridge over the River Kwai, the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum, the War Cemetery and Hellfire Pass, Kanchanaburi has come to mean something else to us: a place where more than 100,000 people lost their lives building a railway that wasn’t theirs.ĭecember 1941, Japan starts its advance through Southeast Asia.
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We only knew about Kanchanaburi province from the Burma Railway the construction of which cost so many lives.