Prison camps of F Force

Hardship and death for Allied prisoners of war

If ever I see home again … I want nothing more … than to forget these awful days—swollen bodies, bloated from beriberi, walking skeletons from dysentery, eyesight becoming universally bad, malaria rampant. Surely this cannot last?

[Stan Arneil, Diary, 1 June 1943, One Man's War, Sydney, Alternative Publishing, 1980, p 99]

The story of F Force is one of the most terrible of the Burma-Thailand Railway. They were one of the last labour forces to leave Changi, Singapore, in mid-April 1943. F Force consisted of 3,662 Australians and some 3,400 British prisoners of war (POWs). Many of these men, particularly the British, were unwell even before they left Singapore. They were Isolated in far up-country Thailand, remote from food and medical supplies and drenched by monsoonal rains. F Force lost 29% (1,060) of the Australians and 60% (2,036) of the British POWs.

F Force's hardships began when they were sent to Thailand by train. Packed into suffocating metal railway trucks with little food and water, even dysentery sufferers had few opportunities to relieve themselves. On reaching Ban Pong in Thailand, F Force was then forced to march over 300 km to camps near the border with Burma.

Arriving up-country in early May, F force was ultimately spread across at least 6 camps progressing towards the Burma border:

• Konkoita (No. 4 camp)
• Shimo (Lower) Ni Thea (Nieke)
• Shimo (Lower) Songkurai (No. 1)
• Songkurai (No. 2)
• Kami (Upper) Songkurai (No. 3)
• Changaraya (No. 5).

From May to October 1943, as the railway progressed, POWs moved between these camps. Australians were mostly located at Shimo Ni Thea, Shimo Songkurai, Kami Songkurai, Konkoita and Tha Khanun.

Learn more about the camps in Thailand.

Shimo Ni Thea

Shimo Ni Thea was the headquarters of F Force from early May to mid-June 1943. Although close to the railway, it was a transit camp rather than a working one, with men going up-country and returning to Kanchanaburi when the railway was completed late in 1943.

At its peak, 1,075 prisoners were based there. Of these, some 450 prisoners were Australians.

Initially, the camp consisted of 2 partially roofed huts and 7 large unroofed huts that had been occupied by Asian forced labourers or rōmusha. A small natural stream, flowing through a depression, provided water. Not that water was in short supply. With almost incessant heavy rain from mid-May to September, the camp became a bog.

Despite widespread dysentery, malaria, beri-beri and diarrhoea, the rates of sickness at Ni Thea were lower than at other camps in the region. However, its hospital progressively gained some 400 seriously ill prisoners from nearby camps.

Changaraya (No. 5)

Changaraya, like Songkurai, was at first a British camp. Some Australians would join the British here in August 1943.

Conditions at Changaraya, 1 km from the border with Burma, were particularly deplorable. Prisoners and rōmusha lived close to each other. The grounds were waterlogged, and sanitation was almost impossible to maintain in the monsoonal conditions. Despite the constant rain, water for drinking and cooking had to be carried a long distance. The Japanese provided almost no buckets or containers.

Cholera broke out at Changaraya on 26 May, with devastating results. Ultimately, 159 men died of the disease. The Japanese forced men recovering from cholera to work. This also went for prisoners desperately ill from dysentery or malaria.

Later in 1943, Changaraya served as a staging camp when the Japanese agreed that some of the most seriously ill of F Force should be transferred to Thanbaya, a hospital camp in Burma.

Konkoita

On their march north around 700 Australians were halted at Konkoita, a short distance before Shimo Ni Thea, on 10 May 1943. Separated from the rest of F Force until December 1943, they were under the command of Australian Lieutenant Colonel S.A.F. (Samuel Austin Frank) Pond, who reported to Lieutenant Maruyama of the Imperial Japanese Army Engineers.

Conditions at Konkoita were appalling. Few huts were roofed and the area, which had been occupied by rōmusha, was filthy. The Australians were employed on bridge and road construction straight away. Within 5 days, cholera broke out in the nearby rōmusha camp. Konkoita would become the focal point of the cholera outbreak that spread throughout the F Force camps, carried by POWs passing through this camp on their way north.

Pond's battalion had a particularly difficult time. It was fragmented and moved across various camps, including Taimonta and Tha Khanun to the south, where it remained for 2 months. The medical officer, Roy Mills, wrote of Lower Taimonta:

… no roofing. Insufficient tents, Burmese camped beside camp … water a problem—all had to be boiled—shortage of dixies—Rice and onion stew only.

[Doctor's Diary and Memoirs: Pond's Party F Force, Thai–Burma Railway, New Lambton, NSW, R.M. Mills, 1994, p 56]

The move to Tha Khanun was particularly gruelling:

A shuttle system had to be employed whereby fit and nearly fit (who by now were very few) marched to the next camp, erected tents, dug latrines, prepared cookhouses etc. and then returned to the last camp to carry stretcher cases and sick men and their gear forward. ... the men repeatedly were ordered back to dig from the mud and then push up the hills the many ox-carts laden with Japanese stores which had become bogged.

[A.J. Sweeting, 'Prisoners of War' in Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust, vol. IV of Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Canberra, Australian War Memorial, 1957, p 578]

It was at Konkoita, in late October 1943, that the track-laying parties from the Thai and Burmese ends of the railway finally met. In an elaborate ceremony, a Japanese general drove a gold spike into an ebony sleeper. A train, drawn by a locomotive shipped from Japan, then drove across the joining point to mark the completion of the line.