Dr Rowley Richards remembers how some prisoners, while being cared for by their mates, would often appear to recover, but then seem to lose the will to live.
Transcript
I had always believed that there was a will to live and if that will to live disappeared, well, you died.
There's much more to it than that, I'm sure of that. It's a bit like bone pointing. You point the bone at yourself I guess.
I've seen many cases of fellows who have been nigh unto death for maybe a couple of weeks, semiconscious most of the time, being handfed by their mates, amazing to still stay alive.
And then when they recover from that and they're starting to be getting better, or think they're getting better, they just up and die on you.
And I think what happened to them was that they would look around and see fellows dying around them and think, 'Oh, it's too hard, no, let me go.'
Read more about illness and death on the Burma-Thailand railway.