THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI

Internationally famous, thanks to the several motion pictures and books, the black iron bridge was brought from Java by the Japanese supervision by Allied PoW labour as part of the Death Railway linking Thailand with Burma. Still in use today, the bridge was the target of frequent Allied bombing raids during WWII and was rebuilt after the war ended. An estimated 16,000 war prisoners and 49,000 labourers died during the construction of the bridge and the Death-Railway line that leads to Burma. The curved spans of the bridge are the original sections. A daily train still follows the historical route from Kanchanaburi to Nam Tok Railway Station. In 1943 thousands of Allied Prisoners of War and Asian labourers worked on the Death Railway under the imperial Japanese army in order to construct part of the 415km long Burma-Thailand railway. Most of these men were Australian, Dutch and British and they had been working steadily southwards from Thanbyuzayat (Burma) to link with the PoW on the Thai side of the railway. This railway was intended to move men and

supplies to the Burmese front where the Japanese were fighting the British. After the war the dead were collectively reburied in the War Cemeteries and will remain forever witness to a brutal and tragic ordeal. JEATH War Museum. JEATH is an acronym for the primary nations which participated in local action. These nations are: Japan, England, Australia, Thailand and Holland. The museum inside Wat Chai Chumphon has been constructed largely in the form of an Allied Prisoner of War camp which is managed by a Thai monk. The thatched detention hut with cramped, elevated bamboo bunks contains photographic, pictorial and physical memorabilia dating from WWII. Hellfire Pass is the name of a railway cutting on the Death Railway in Thailand, known by the Japanese as Konyu cutting. There is a museum co-sponsored by the Thai and Australian governments at the site to commemorate the suffering of those involved in the construction of the railway. Konyu cutting was a particularly difficult section of the line to build due to it being the largest rock cutting on the railway, coupled with its general remoteness and the lack of proper construction tools during building. A tunnel would have been possible to build instead of a cutting, but this could only be constructed at the two ends at any one time, whereas the cutting could be constructed at all points simultaneously despite the excess effort required by the POWs. The Australian, British, Dutch and other allied Prisoners of War were required by the Japanese to work 18 hours a day to complete the cutting. It was estimated that 68 men were beaten to death by the Japanese guards in the six weeks it took to build the cutting, although many more died from cholera, dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion . However, the majority of deaths occurred amongst labourers whom the Japanese enticed to come to help build the line with promises of good jobs. These labourers, mostly Malayans (Chinese, Malays and Tamils from Malaya), suffered mostly the same as the PoWs at the hands of the Japanese. The Japanese kept no records of these deaths.