burma railway prisoners of war list

More than 12,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and tens of thousands of forced labourers perished during its construction. The two curved spans of the bridge which collapsed due to the British air attack were replaced by angular truss spans provided by Japan as part of their postwar reparations, thus forming the iconic bridge now seen today. It was to be built by a captive labour force of about 60,000 Allied prisoners of war and 200,000 romusha, or Asian labourers. This is particularly true on Anzac Day (April 25), when Australians pay tribute to those who served and lost their lives during war. Two forces, one based in Thailand and one in Burma, worked from opposite ends' of the line towards the centre.When the first of the prisoners arrived their initial task was the construction of camps at Kanchanaburi and Ban Pong in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma. They have no latrines. [90], Three cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) contain the vast majority of Allied military personnel who died on the Burma Railway.[90]. More than one in five of them died there. Max Heiliger did a lot more then just laundering money for the Nazis. Yet many of them have shown extraordinary kindness to sick British prisoners passing down the river, giving them sugar and helping them into the railway trucks at Tarsao. For much of its . A bridge was not built until the Thanlwin Bridge (carrying both regular road and railroad traffic) was constructed between 2000 and 2005. During its construction more than 16 ,000 prisoners of war died - mainly of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion - and were buried along the railway. The first train to pass Konkoita on the newly constructed Burma-Thailand railway, built for the Japanese by prisoner of war (POW) labour. Some 30 000 of these prisoners of war later worked on the ThaiBurma railway. "About a dozen on the Burma side and more again on the Thailand side of the railway, in camps like F-Force and D-Force, and about eight men who were with 'Weary' Dunlop at Hintok," he said. Little is known of why the men of the 2nd AIF volunteered to serve. Two hundred men were housed in each barracks, giving each man a two-foot wide space in which to live and sleep. [9] On 23 June 1942, 600 British soldiers arrived at Camp Nong Pladuk, Thailand to build a camp to serve as a transit camp for the work camps along the railway. Since the 1990s various proposals have been made to rebuild the complete railway, but as of 2021[update] these plans had not been realised. The quality of medical care received by different groups of prisoners varied enormously. [40][41] Construction camps housing at least 1,000 workers each were established every 510 miles (817km) of the route. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Jun 9, 2015 - Explore Samm Blake's board "Burma Thai Railway Prisoners of War - Historical Footage / Photos", followed by 2,370 people on Pinterest. Javanese, Malayan Tamils of Indian origin, Burmese, Chinese, Thai, and other Southeast Asians, forcibly drafted by the Imperial Japanese Army to work on the railway, died in its construction. [10][11] After preliminary work of airfields and infrastructure, construction of the railway began in Burma and Thailand on 16 September 1942. A newly wealthy English woman returns to Malaya to build a well for the villagers who helped her during war. Estimates vary but the number who worked on the railway was possibly as high as 18 000. For example, a group of 400 Dutch prisoners, which included three doctors with extensive tropical medicine experience, suffered no deaths at all. Of the 668 US personnel forced to work on the railway, 133 died. Nearly all our Australian POW Books are true stories many written by the Australian POW who worked on the Thai Burma Railway during WW2. $14.00 View Detail The higher deaths in F Force were probably attributable to the fact that British workers contained a high proportion of men who were already ill when they left Singapore. Most of the camps were right alongside the railway track and some were near bridges and other vulnerable points. 0 9 4 minutes read. They were joined in captivity by three hundred survivors of the sinking of the HMAS Perth in the Battle of Java Sea in late February 1942. More recently, the motion picture The Railway Man (based on the book of the same name) also gives insight into the barbaric conditions and suffering that were inflicted upon the workers who built the railway. Over 22 000 Australians were captured by the Japanese when they conquered South East Asia in early 1942. [44], The construction camps consisted of open-sided barracks built of bamboo poles with thatched roofs. Contact our Media sales & Licensing team about access. The construction of the railway is a heartbreaking story of forced labor, with more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war . Even though defeated, they displayed the Anzac skills of resourcefulness, laconic humour, mateship and survival against the odds. Work began at both ends of the rail line in June 1942. Vegetables and other perishables long in transit arrived rotten. Votes: 1,734. A large number of the British and Australian captives were sent to Burma (Myanmar). Lieutenant General Eiguma Ishida, overall commander of the Burma Railway, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. 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 Pekanbaru to Muaro. Sidi Barrani, on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, had been occupied by the Italian 10th Army, during the Italian invasion of Egypt (9-16 September 1940) and was attacked by British, Commonwealth and imperial . Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. notebook kept by captain harold lord, regular officer in the royal army service corps (rasc), whilst a japanese prisoner of war working on the burma-thailand railway in 1943, listing neatly and chronologically the names of the british prisoners of war who worked on the railway, may - december 1943, together with the following information about When Britainwent to waron 3 September 1939 there was none of the 'flag-waving patriotism' of August 1914. As well as these deaths, Japanese civilians were nearly 10,000 lost at sea in this attack and Australia lost about 2800 soldiers to American operations. Such extreme mortality was experienced by Australian and British prisoners of war (POW) forced to build the Thai-Burma railway during the Second World War. For the railways of the country Burma, see, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "The Japanese invasion of Thailand, 8 December 1941", "How was Thailand Impacted in World War 2? His subordinates Colonel Shigeo Nakamura, Colonel Tamie Ishii and Lieutenant-Colonel Shoichi Yanagita were sentenced to death. In 1960, because of discrepancies between facts and fiction, the portion of the Mae Klong which passes under the bridge was renamed the Khwae Yai ( in the Thai language; in English, 'big tributary'). One of the earliest and most respected accounts is ex-POW John Coast's Railroad of Death, first published in 1946 and republished in a new edition in 2014. Between 180,000 and 250,000 Southeast Asian civilians and over 60,000 Allied prisoners of war were subjected to forced labour during its construction. The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project inspired by the need for improved communications to maintain the large Japanese Armv in Burma. Konkoita is approximately 263 kilometres north of Nong Pladuk (also known as Non Pladuk), or 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat. [56] Those left to maintain the line still suffered from appalling living conditions as well as increasing Allied air raids. Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, at Thanbyuzayat, 65 kilometres south of Moulmein, Myanmar (Burma) has the graves of 3,617 POWs who died on the Burmese portion of the line. The only cover for the prisoners was that afforded by the flimsy bamboo and thatch huts, where they were made to shelter while the raids were in progress, and the inevitable casualties were heavy. In the War Cemetery at Thanbyuzayat in Burma lie those from the northern half of the line. Some have even brought wives and children. At both camp and base hospitals, for the greater part of the time, the doctors had only such drugs and equipment as they had been able to carry with them. Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. The cuttings at Hellfire Pass became known as the speedo period, after a solecistic command shouted by Japanese guards and engineers to their English-speaking prisoners. Coast also details the camaraderie, pastimes, and humour of the POWs in the face of adversity.[47]. Red Cross parcels helped, but these were invariably held up by the Japanese. From June 1942 onwards large groups of prisoners were transferred periodically to Thailand and Burma from Java, Sumatra and Borneo. The Australian commander Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Kappe attributed the lower Australian death rate to a more determined will to live, a higher sense of discipline, a particularly high appreciation of the importance of good sanitation, and a more natural adaptability to harsh conditions [and to] the splendid and unselfish services rendered by the medical personnel in the Force. By far the majority of British POWs nearly 29 000 of them were sent to Thailand. No prisoner of war may be employed at labors for which he is physically unfit. Many are now held by the Australian War Memorial, State Library of Victoria, and the Imperial War Museum in London. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation, and neglect. Death Railway . Contact our Media sales & Licensing team about access, whole: Dimensions: 30x21cm., Pagination: [5] leaves 4 plans. Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. The cook-house and huts for the working parties came next and accommodation for the sick last of all. The barracks were about 60m (66yd) long with sleeping platforms raised above the ground on each side of an earthen floor. [37] British doctor Robert Hardie wrote: "The conditions in the coolie camps down river are terrible," Basil says, "They are kept isolated from Japanese and British camps. The 75th anniversary of the infamous Thai-Burma Railway built by World War II prisoners of war will be marked today. [75] Repair work soon commenced afterwards and continued again and both bridges were operational again by the end of May. The rice was of poor quality, frequently maggoty or in other ways contaminated, and fish, meat, oil, salt and sugar were on a minimum scale. Although working conditions were far better for the Japanese than the POWs and rmusha workers, about 1,000 (eight percent) of them died during construction. Abstract. The line was abandoned beyond Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi;[27][22] the steel rails were salvaged for reuse in expanding the Bang Sue railway yard, reinforcing the BangkokBan Phachi Junction double track, rehabilitating the track from Thung Song Junction to Trang, and constructing both the Nong Pla DukSuphan Buri and Ban Thung PhoKhiri Rat Nikhom branch lines. In Burma. [54][55], After the completion of the railroad, over 10,000 POWs were then transported to Japan. Although it was often possible to supplement this diet by purchases from the local civilian population, men sometimes had to live for weeks on little more than a small daily ration of rice flavoured with salt. by Ezra Hoyt Ripple (Editor), Mark A. Snell (Editor) Hardcover - 168 pages. ARTICLE 30. Donate to COFEPOW instantly - simply click on the button below. 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