burma railway prisoners of war list

As before, their food and accommodation were minor considerations. Between June 1942 and October 1943 the POWs and forced labourers laid some 258 miles (415 km) of track from Ban Pong, Thailand (roughly 45 miles [72 km] west of Bangkok), to Thanbyuzayat, Burma (roughly 35 miles [56 km] south of Mawlamyine). Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. In 1943 Dutch prisoners were sent to Thailand where they suffered the same hardships as other Allied POWs. These coolies have been brought from Malaya under false pretenses 'easy work, good pay, good houses!' [38] The labourers that suffered the highest casualties were Burmese and Indian Tamils from Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as many Javanese.[30]. About 60,000 were sent to work on the railway; 13,000 of them were Australian. The second largest group of prisoners more than 2700 were captured on Java. 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. Cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment, humiliation, and neglect. [32], One of the most notable portions of the entire railway line is Bridge 277, the so-called "Bridge on the River Kwai", which was built over a stretch of the river that was then known as part of the Mae Klong River. The line was abandoned beyond Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi;[27][22] the steel rails were salvaged for reuse in expanding the Bang Sue railway yard, reinforcing the BangkokBan Phachi Junction double track, rehabilitating the track from Thung Song Junction to Trang, and constructing both the Nong Pla DukSuphan Buri and Ban Thung PhoKhiri Rat Nikhom branch lines. ", "Burma-Siam Railway - Australia receives no payment", "Grote schade aan materiaal der N.I. The first contingent of around 3000 reached Thailand some months before the Australians in June 1942. The Death Railway is only one of the names describing the Japanese project built in 1943 to provide support to its forces during World War II. The defendants were charged with crimes against Western prisoners of war and civilians and with crimes against local people. First, the Burmese city of Lashio was the southern terminus of the Burma Road, the main resupply route for Chinese during the Sino-Japanese War. At main camps such as Chungkai, Tamarkan, Non Pladuk and Thanbyuzayat were "base Hospitals" which were also huts of bamboo and thatch, staffed by such medical officers and orderlies as were allowed by the Japanese to care for the sick prisoners. The 'Death Railway' was very well named. The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project inspired by the need for improved communications to maintain the large Japanese Armv in Burma. [10][11] After preliminary work of airfields and infrastructure, construction of the railway began in Burma and Thailand on 16 September 1942. Second, the occupation of Burma would also put Japanese armies on the doorstep of British India. 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. The first cut at Konyu was approximately 1,500 feet (450 metres) long and 23 feet (7 metres) deep, and the second was approximately 250 feet (75 metres) long and 80 feet (25 metres) deep. He was one of Dunlop's 1,000 the men under commanding . By late spring 1942, with the surrender of Allied strongholds in Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies, an estimated 140,000 Allied prisoners of war had fallen into Japanese hands. Ron Arad Israeli fighter pilot, shot down over Lebanon in 1986. . Imprest Burmese and Malay labourers too died in their thousands - exactly how many will never be known. Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. Fifty-nine were women from the Australian Army Nursing Service. Photo taken on Aug. 19, 2020 shows the bridge over the River Kwai, the most notable part of the "Death Railway," in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Map of Prisoner of War Camps. Steve White-do-not-use. Published by Marsworth. On this end of the railway the workforce was largely Australian, Dutch and local rmusha. They were joined in captivity by three hundred survivors of the sinking of the HMAS Perth in the Battle of Java Sea in late February 1942. Listed under D-Day - The Normandy Invasion. Initially, 1,000 prisoners worked on the bridge and were commanded by Colonel Philip Toosey. [62], Workers in more isolated areas suffered a much higher death rate than did others. Aside from the classic British-American film in 1957, Bridge on the River Kwai, the struggles prisoners of war endured in Burma and the making of the "death railway" became a "forgotten war" - it got lost in the Western Front's heroics and the ugly truth about the horrifying gas chambers found in the Nazis' prison camps. Notebook kept by Captain Harold Lord, regular officer in the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), whilst a Japanese prisoner of war working on the Burma-Thailand railway in 1943, listing neatly and chronologically the names of the British prisoners of war who worked on the railway, May - December 1943, together with the following information about each: rank, serial number, regiment, date of birth, home address, next-of-kin, religion, date on which arrived at the camp, and date of leaving because of illness (the type of illness is stated in each case) or, as in many cases, death. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, especially after the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Konkoita is approximately 263 kilometres north of Nong Pladuk (also known as Non Pladuk), or 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat. If you are joining after August, please choose the month you are joining in below. Map Created by Philip Cross July 2000. At both camp and base hospitals, for the greater part of the time, the doctors had only such drugs and equipment as they had been able to carry with them. The first train to pass Konkoita on the newly constructed Burma-Thailand railway, built for the Japanese by prisoner of war (POW) labour. In 1939 the age limits for enlistment in the AIF were 19 to 35 years of age (higher for officers and some NCOs). The Japanese stopped all work on . Between 180,000 and 250,000 Southeast Asian civilians and over 60,000 Allied prisoners of war were subjected to forced labour during its construction. My Dad is not with us to tell his own story although he did keep a diary . On 8 December 1941, Japan invaded Thailand which quickly surrendered. Alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from 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. Thus, ferries were needed as an alternative connecting system. The railway connected Thailand and Burma and was shut down in 1947, after the war. The graves of those who died during the construction and maintenance of the Burma-Siam railway (except Americans, who were repatriated) have been transferred from the camp burial grounds and solitary sites along the railway into three war cemeteries. [74] Repairs were carried out by forced labour of POWs shortly after and by April the wooden railroad trestle bridge was back in operation. A copper spike was driven at the meeting point by commanding General Eiguma Ishida, and a memorial plaque was revealed. The greater part of the Thai section of the river's route followed the valley of the Khwae Noi River (khwae, 'stream, river' or 'tributary'; noi, 'small'. In 1942, Milton "Snow" Fairclough was taken prisoner by the Japanese army in Java and forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. [73], The two bridges were successfully bombed and damaged on 13 February 1945 by bomber aircraft from the Royal Air Force (RAF). Accommodation for the Japanese guards had to be built first, and at all the staging camps built subsequently along the railway this rule applied. The Australian commander Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Kappe attributed the lower Australian death rate to a more determined will to live, a higher sense of discipline, a particularly high appreciation of the importance of good sanitation, and a more natural adaptability to harsh conditions [and to] the splendid and unselfish services rendered by the medical personnel in the Force. Donate to COFEPOW instantly - simply click on the button below. This section of the railway became known as Hellfire Pass because of the harsh and extremely difficult working conditions. The Burma- Death Railway. In his book Last Man Out, H. Robert Charles, an American Marine survivor of the sinking of the USS Houston, writes in depth about a Dutch doctor, Henri Hekking, a fellow POW who probably saved the lives of many who worked on the railway. [9] On 23 June 1942, 600 British soldiers arrived at Camp Nong Pladuk, Thailand to build a camp to serve as a transit camp for the work camps along the railway. Those who have no known grave are commemorated by name on memorials elsewhere; the land forces on either the Rangoon Memorial or the Singapore Memorial and the naval casualties on memorials at the manning ports. South Australian Rex Butler's time as a hard-riding buffalo shooter in the Northern Territory's crocodile swamps stood him in good stead when he went to war, fell into the hands of the Japanese and made an incredible escape. The estimated number of civilian labourers and POWs who died during construction varies considerably, but the Australian Government figures suggest that of the 330,000 people who worked on the line (including 250,000 Asian labourers and 61,000 Allied POWs) about 90,000 of the labourers and about 16,000 Allied prisoners died.[30]. However, the film and book contain many historical inaccuracies, and should be considered works of fiction. Max Heiliger-Laundering money for the Nazis. The rice was of poor quality, frequently maggoty or in other ways contaminated, and fish, meat, oil, salt and sugar were on a minimum scale. Red Cross parcels helped, but these were invariably held up by the Japanese. [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]. The 75th anniversary of the infamous Thai-Burma Railway built by World War II prisoners of war will be marked today. "[46] The living and working conditions on the Burma Railway were often described as "horrific", with maltreatment, sickness, and starvation. The Japanese Army transported 500,000 tonnes of freight[citation needed] over the railway before it fell into Allied hands. From British mathematician Arthur Thomas Doodson's Tide-prediction machine, and PLUTO (short for 'pipeline under the ocean' - supplied petrol from Britain to Europe), to the German's 'Rommel's Asparagus', discover 7 clever innovations used on D-Day. Most recruits were in their twenties. As a result of war bombing on bridges repeatedly, the Japanese used it to supply their troops in Burma. The larger number of British deaths overall reflects the fact that there were simply more British working on the railway than Australians or Dutch POWs. Japanese soldiers, 12,000 of them, including 800 Koreans, were employed on the railway as engineers, guards, and supervisors of the POW and rmusha labourers. 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. Only the devotion skill and enterprise of the prisoner of war medical staffs saved the lives of thousands and gradually evolved an organisation which could control disease and mortality. 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. Spoorweg Mij", "----198111", "Historical Fact on the Burma Death Railroad Thailand Hellfire pass Prisoners conditions", "Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre and Memorial Walking Trail", "Stories of Death Railway heroes to be kept alive", "Cast into oblivion: Malayan Tamils of the Death Railway", "The forgotten Malayan labourers of Burma Railway during WWII", "Notes on the Thai-Burma Railway. "About a dozen on the Burma side and more again on the Thailand side of the railway, in camps like F-Force and D-Force, and about eight men who were with 'Weary' Dunlop at Hintok," he said. All of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment."[20]. [64] Hiroshi Abe, a first lieutenant who supervised construction of the railway at Sonkrai where 600 British prisoners out of 1,600 died of cholera and other diseases,[65] was sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison, as a B/C class war criminal. The Factors of Survival. From June 1942 onwards large groups of prisoners were transferred periodically to Thailand and Burma from Java, Sumatra and Borneo. Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association, Remembering the sufferings of POW's on the Burma-Thai Railway. RM 2CYBAYN - Military personnel and people attend a dawn memorial service for soldiers who died during World War Two on ANZAC Day at Hellfire Pass in Kanchanaburi province, Thailand, April 25, 2015. Organization of the Labor. Much of the excavation was carried out with inadequate hand tools, and, because work on the railway had fallen behind schedule, the pace of work was increased. Probably their motives were mixed: a desire for adventure, a sense of duty, nationalism and a conviction that they were part of a proud Australian military tradition dating from Gallipoli. [100], A preserved section of line has been rebuilt at the National Memorial Arboretum in England.[101]. It is also known from a study of the Australians who joined the army in World War II that they were generally young and unmarried. 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. Jun 9, 2015 - Explore Samm Blake's board "Burma Thai Railway Prisoners of War - Historical Footage / Photos", followed by 2,370 people on Pinterest. George, from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was a POW in Java in 1942. The rail line was built along the Khwae Noi (Kwai) River valley to support the Japanese armed forces during the Burma Campaign. Major Sotomatsu Chida was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Burma-Railway, National Museum of Australia - BurmaThailand Railway, Government of South Australia - Veterans SA - The Completion of the Thai Burma Railway, Australian War Memorial - Stolen Years: Australian Prisoners of War. Dutch chemist Van Boxtell. BURMA-04_roster (WO 361-2204) - British and American POWs at Burma Camp 6, later IV. The decision to complete the railway connecting Moulmein with Bangkok, which had been commenced before the war but abandoned by the two countries concerned, was taken in June 1942. His account of the conditions and suffering endured by his fellow prisoners and himself makes for the most extraordinary and disturbing reading. 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