Content on Burma-Thailand Railway

This page lists content tagged with "Burma-Thailand Railway"

Kanchanaburi today

Kinsaiyok camps

[Kinsaiyok] was on flat ground close to the Menam Kwai Noi River, and as the weather was still extremely wet, for the most part constituted a quagmire.

Konyu River camp

Above and behind us to the north runs a high jungle-treed ridge in the greens, browns and reds of the Australian bush.

Konyu Road camps

We had located Major Quick's 'T' Battalion early, on our arrival at Kenyu [sic], and received a shock to see the conditions under which they were living

Local memories

Very few Thais worked on the construction of the

Locations

Malay Hamlet camp

The site of the camp was on a beautiful sloping hill with a stream running and gurgling some twenty yards away.

Map of F Force camps

Map of the Burma-Thailand railway

Map of the Hellfire Pass area

Map of the Hellfire Pass area were the most common type of engineering task along the Thai-Burma railway, ranging from small earthworks to massive artificial hills rising out of the jungle.

Medical improvisation

For bedpans we used tin cans, old mess tins, half coconut shells and troughs or pots made from large bamboo. Toilet paper was the large leaves from nearby trees.

Mixed feelings as POWs waited to be released

Every day that Australians spent as prisoners of war they longed for freedom. They thought about family and friends at home and just hoped to survive for the end of the war.

Museums

The history of the Burma-Thailand railway is explored in of a number of museums in

New Britain and Timor

Then there was nothing. Dead silence. All I got was a telegram saying he was missing.

Norman Anderton - World War II veteran (Video)

Norman joined the army in Sydney in 1940 at the age of 19, and served in the 8th Division Signals.

Nurses

Sores wouldn't heal. Your hair was getting thinner. You were so thin that you'd scratch and you'd get your finger caught in your ribs.

Other national memories

The Burma-Thailand railway was built by a multinational workforce, consisting of Al

Peril at sea

The ship was like a wreck; ragged, rusted gear, broken casting, bits of plating and junk, winch cylinders almost rusted through, great cankers of rust as if the ship had leprosy, the la

POW medical personnel

All of it [Kevin Fagan] did with the courtesy of a society specialist who is being richly paid for his attention and the ready humour of a man who is no

Prisoners of War: In Their Own Words (Educational), (Student activity)

Hear Australian veterans share their harrowing experiences of captivity during the Second World War.

Recovering the dead

The first [cemetery] with 146 graves had sufficient of the original crosses still legible for location to be simple … The cholera cemetery was hard to f

Remembering the Railway

In the decades since 1945 prisoners of war and the Thai–Burma railway have come to occupy a central place in Australia's national memory of war.

Resources

Robert Goodwin - World War II veteran (Video)

Robert 'Bob' Molesworth Goodwin OAM was an insurance clerk in Brisbane before he enlisted in July 1940 with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF).

Rǒmusha beyond the railway

The ruthless occupier, who fagged us out and allowed us not a single free day and was guilty of the death daily of dozens of rǒmusha, who were made to do slave labor, received

Rǒmusha on the railway

A new embankment and cutting are being built by Tamils [at Compressor Cutting] to skirt and avoid the bridge.

Rǒmusha recruitment

The soldiers forced me to get into the lorry. There were already thirty other people there. I was wearing only a pair of shorts and sandals.

Rǒmusha repatriation and memory

They were simply left to their fate and wandered around everywhere in the hope of managing to get a bite of food somewhere.

Roy Cornford - World War II veteran (Oral history)

Roy Cornford - World War II veteran (Video)

Roy Cornford, a 19-year-old labourer, enlisted into the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in September 1941

Shimo Songkurai camp

This month of May 1943 has been the blackest so far since we have been Ps.O.W. It is interminable.

Singapore

A bad day. Took 100 men on a party to unload cement into a godown.

Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop

The men would do anything for him and are proud to be with him.

Songkurai camp

[Songkurai] was merely a clearing in the dense jungle, in which there were several long bamboo-framed huts, some with a semblance of an attap roof and o

Staying sane

In order to cope … most men surrounded themselves in their own personal and protective armour.

Surviving

Illness and death were constants on the Thai–Burma railway. Approximately 12 800 of more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war, and up to 90,000 r?musha, died between 1942 and 1945.

Tha Khanun and Thanbaya campsites

In the mornings mist wreathes and smokes along the hillside above us, green with its feathery bamboos and tall trees.

Thailand

Our emaciated, cadaverous bodies were covered in rags, we were all barefooted with bandages covering our ulcers and we were almost all rotten with malaria and beri beri.

The Australian Prisoners' Accounts

Experiences as prisoners of the Japanese.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

… as for the bridge on the River Kwai, it crossed the river only in the imagination of its author.

The Building of Hellfire Pass

The Burma-Thailand railway was built in 1942–43 to supply the Japanese forces in Burma, bypassing the sea routes that were made vulnerable when Japanese naval strength was reduced in the Battles of…

The Burma-Thailand railway in operation

The main traffic centres on the line are spots of considerable activity, with reversing triangles and many locomotive shelters.

The Burmese

By participating in the project [the Burma-Thailand railway] the Burmese could really be doing something that could widen their future, and so we agreed

The destruction of the railway

Foreign Office view is that the railway should be sold to the Siamese at the best possible price obtainable which should include compensation for the labour employed on the construction

The dixie

Every man who worked on the railway, in whichever section, would have an automatic passport to Heaven. They have all done the requisite stretch in Hell.

The enemy

Around 12 000 Japanese and 800 Korean soldiers worked on the Burma-Thailand railway as engineers or guards. They were some of over five million soldiers who served with the Imperial Japanese Army…

The Japanese on the railway

Little is known of the experience of Japanese engineers and guards who worked on the

The marches

Approximately 455 prisoners of war (POWs) left Sandakan in the first march. They left the camp in different groups between January and March 1945.

The Weary Dunlop Park

… all the prisoners of war love him very much … So, when he died, I made up my mind to have Weary Dunlop Park in memory of him.

The workers

Military units to which the Australians belonged were broken up into work forces to meet the Japanese need for labour. From late 1942 more than 13 000 Australians were sent from Singapore, Java and…
Subscribe to Content on Burma-Thailand Railway