It is also the case that Australians distinctive national characteristics did not give them a greater chance of survival, as is sometimes assumed. [7] The Japanese began this project in June 1942. Donate to COFEPOW instantly - simply click on the button below. Highlights. In contrast, only 4000 Australians were captured by the Germans and Ottomans in World War I. Java was the place where the second largest group of Australians was captured. They had very little transportation to get stuff to and from the workers, they had almost no medication, they couldnt get food let alone materials, they had no tools to work with except for basic things like spades and hammers, and they worked in extremely difficult conditions in the jungle with its heat and humidity. More than 22 000 Australians were taken prisoner in the Asia-Pacific region in the early months of 1942. This video is sponsored by Ground News - The world's first news comparison platform. Deel 8 De tragedie van de Birma-Siam Spoorweg", "The Railway Man: Australian keeps legacy of Thailand's 'Death Railway' alive helping relatives of POWs gain closure", Captive Audiences/Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 19421945, Works of Ashley George Old held by the State Library of Victoria. [63] The most important trial was against the general staff. List of Australian Army Medical Corp Officers on the Burma-Thailand Railway A FORCE To Burma May 1942 D FORCE To Southern end of line March 1943 DUNLOP FORCE To Southern end of line January 1943 F FORCE To Northern Thailand April 1943 H FORCE To Southern end of line 1943 L FORCE Deployed in medical support of natives August 1943 [66][67] No compensation or reparations have been provided to Southeast Asian victims. During this time, most of the POWs were moved to hospital and relocation camps where they could be available for maintenance crews or sent to Japan to alleviate the manpower shortage there. During its construction more than 16 ,000 prisoners of war died - mainly of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion - and were buried along the railway. 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. In all, over 8000 of these men and women around 35 per cent would die during captivity, more than 2800 of them working on the ThaiBurma railway. 1, 5 - 9 Their experience under these extreme wartime conditions is examined to discover the likely contribution of malaria-associated mortality to the total number of deaths. About 60,000 were sent to work on the railway; 13,000 of them were Australian. Show more. All of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment."[20]. [76], The new railway line did not fully connect with the Burmese railroad network as no railroad bridges were built which crossed the river between Moulmein and Martaban (the former on the river's southern bank and the latter to the opposite on the northern bank). In reality, however, the death rates of British and Australians across all sites on the railway were scarcely any different 22 and 21 per cent respectively. Most of the railway was dismantled shortly after the war. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Stolen banknotes and jewelry along with Holocaust victims' dental gold, wedding rings, and even scrap gold melted down from spectacles-frames flooded into the Max Heiliger accounts, completely filling several bank vaults by 1942. The Australian, British, Dutch and other Allied prisoners of war, along with Chinese, Malay, and Tamil labourers, were required by the Japanese to complete the cutting. [23] On 1 February 1947, two people including Momluang Kri Dechatiwong[th], the Thai Minister of Transport, were killed on an inspection tour because the bridge near Konkoita had collapsed. There, approximately 20% of the Allied POWs died during its construction. Used with permission of the author, Lilian Sluyter. Updates? For much of its . See more ideas about prisoners of war, war, historical. 61,000 Prisoners of War were forced to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway in the most atrocious conditions. These coolies have been brought from Malaya under false pretenses 'easy work, good pay, good houses!' The Japanese hoped to capture the Indian region of Assam, with the intention of using it as the base for an insurrection under the Japanese-backed Indian revolutionary leader Subhas Chandra Bose. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burma_Railway&oldid=1133973618, Iron bridge across Kwae Yai River at Tha Makham, Arch Flanagan (19152013), Australian soldier and father of novelist, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 11:22. The railway, built by the Empire of Japan in 1943 to support its attack on the British colony of Burma, used forced labour, including Asian civilians and Allied prisoners of war, many thousands of . The first prisoners of war to work in Thailand, 3,000 British soldiers, left Changi by train in June 1942 to Ban Pong, the southern terminus of the railway. Tens of thousands of POWs were packed onto vessels that came to be known as Hell ships; one in five prisoners did not survive the cramped, disease-ridden journey. The Japanese assumed that if Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalist forces were deprived of this key logistical resource, their conquest of China could be easily completed. 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? Chungkai War Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, has a further 1,693 war graves. There were additionally about 250,000 natives (coolies) who were previously residents of countries including Java, Ambon, Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Tamils who had been working in some of these countries. The overwhelming majority of Allied POWs were from Commonwealth countries; they included approximately 22,000 Australians (of whom 21,000 were from the Australian Army, 354 from the Royal Australian Navy, and 373 from the Royal Australian Air Force), more than 50,000 British troops, and at least 25,000 Indian troops. The largest of these is at Hellfire Pass (north of the current terminus at Nam Tok), a cutting where the greatest number of people died. [50] Charles died in December 2009. A railway route between Burma and Thailand, crossing Three Pagodas Pass and following the valley of the Khwae Noi river in Thailand, had been surveyed by the British government of Burma as early as 1885, but the proposed course of the line through hilly jungle terrain divided by many rivers was considered too difficult to undertake. Max Heiliger-Laundering money for the Nazis. [38] The labourers that suffered the highest casualties were Burmese and Indian Tamils from Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as many Javanese.[30]. A bridge was not built until the Thanlwin Bridge (carrying both regular road and railroad traffic) was constructed between 2000 and 2005. After the Japanese were defeated in the Battles of the Coral Sea (May 48, 1942) and Midway (June 36, 1942), the sea-lanes between the Japanese home islands and Burma were no longer secure. In these camps entertainment flourished as an essential part of their rehabilitation. Since the Netherlands East Indies had been under Dutch control for centuries, the Dutch POWs included not only Europeans but Eurasians, who had acquired full civil rights, and indigenous soldiers, including Sundanese, Javanese, Menadonese, Ambonese and Timorese. Finally, on 1 July 1958, the rail line was completed to Nam Tok (Thai , 'waterfall', referring to the nearby Sai Yok Noi Waterfall) The portion in use today is some 130km (81mi) long. CHAPTER 2. [3][4] Thailand was forced to accept an alliance,[5] and was used as a staging point for the attack on Singapore. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Thanbyuzayat, Myanmar, holds 621 Dutch graves, Copyright 2023 Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association. 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. George, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was a POW in Java in 1942. [9] Much of the construction materials, including tracks and sleepers, were brought from dismantled branches of Malaya's Federated Malay States Railway network and the East Indies' various rail networks. Konkoita is approximately 263 kilometres north of Nong Pladuk (also known as Non Pladuk), or 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat. Steve White-do-not-use. The total length of miles, the total number of bridges over 600, including six to eight long-span bridges the total number of people who were involved (one-quarter of a million), the very short time in which they managed to accomplish it, and the extreme conditions they accomplished it under. Towards the end of the war there were also casualties from Allied bombing raids. 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. The bulk of these forces were captured with the fall of Singapore, an event widely characterized as the worst military defeat in British history. Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association, Remembering the sufferings of POW's on the Burma-Thai Railway. On 8 December 1941, Japan invaded Thailand which quickly surrendered. The large population of local labourers, estimated to number around 100,000, had an even higher mortality rate. [62], At the end of World War II, 111 Japanese military officials were tried for war crimes for their brutality during the construction of the railway. ", "Yamashita: the greatest Japanese general of World War II? This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, especially after the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Since the 8th Division was raised during the crisis of the fall of France in mid-1940, these men would also have chosen to play a role in averting Allied defeat. Education Zone | Developed By Rara Theme. These activities engaged numerous POWs as actors, singers, musicians, designers, technicians, and female impersonators. The Burma Railway, also known as the SiamBurma Railway, ThaiBurma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a 415km (258mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat, Burma (now called Myanmar). Contact our Media sales & Licensing team about access, whole: Dimensions: 30x21cm., Pagination: [5] leaves 4 plans. [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]. What mattered in captivity was not so much a mans nationality but the particular circumstances and location of the places in which he worked, his access to food, medicines and medical care, his genetic inheritance, and even his luck and will to survive. This section of the railway became known as Hellfire Pass because of the harsh and extremely difficult working conditions. Alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from ARTICLE 30. 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. 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. Parts of the abandoned route have been converted into a walking trail.[28]. With an enormous pool of captive labour at their disposal, the Japanese forced approximately 200,000 Asian conscripts and over 60,000 Allied POWs to construct the Burma Railway. Taff suffered from dysentery, malaria, beri beri and cholera but, unlike so many, he survived. This was the same time at which Australians in A Force left Changi for Burma. The Japanese demanded from each camp a certain percentage of its strength for working parties, irrespective of the number of sick, and to make up the required quota the Japanese camp commandants insisted on men totally unfit for work being driven out and sometimes carried out. 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 They were set to work building a camp at Nong Pladuk which would form a base for future groups of POWs. Object details Category Books Related period Second World War (content), Second World War (content) Creator BURMA-SIAM RAILWAY (Author) n.pub. On 16 January 1946, the British ordered Japanese POWs to remove a four kilometre stretch of rail between Nikki (Ni Thea) and Sonkrai. Little detailed research has been done on the background of Australian POWs and how this affected their chances of survival. Votes: 1,734. 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