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In October 1942 Prisoners of War had started constructing a great wooden bridge over the Kwae-Yoi River which was completed in February 1943 and took its first train. The new steel bridge, constructed entirely by manpower, using a few pulleys, derricks and cement mixers was  finished by May 1943, midst great rejoicing by the Japanese. Three decades later a village had been developed on the site of the old Prisoner of War camp with a restaurant and shop overlooking the original steel bridge. A modem speedboat is available to take visitors along the River Kwae-Yoi and Thai boatmen can go almost to Three Pagodas Pass in hours, a journey on foot of a month for the Prisoners of War.
The railway has its own folklore according to Lieutenant Colonel Terry Beaton who recently undertook a detailed study of the 'Death Railway'. Beaton notes that many people have spent years searching for the site of the 'Pack of Cards Bridge' in the Hintok area. So called because it was reportedly made of green timber and kept falling down. According to a veteran however the bridge was only meant to be temporary and was built quickly to allow passage of materials to work sites further up the track. It only fell down once because the Tamil workers had not side-braced it correctly. Australians then had to work hard to rapidly re-erect the bridge. Later a more permanent rock embankment was constructed around the bridge and still exists today.
Three famous features of the 'Death Railway' remain in use today. The 'Bridge Over The River Kwae' still stands majestically like a preserved dinosaur and is used extensively by pedestrian and motorcycle traffic as well as a regular train service. Of course the movie of the same name is totally fictional but has done a lot to rekindle lost memories and promote tourism in Thailand. The modern day train also passes daily through the infamous Chungkai cuttings which claimed so many lives during their excavation.
Also impressive in 1992 is the six hundred metre long timber trestle bridge known as the Wampo Viaduct. This is an impressive double trestle bridge that was precariously erected in the dug out cliff face above the edge of the Kwae Yoi River. Although many of the timber supports have been replaced and the old concrete footings are slowly being encased in thick concrete, original timbers can still be identified by the adze cuts left when the round tree trunks were chipped into angular sections. Across the viaduct the old rails are still being used as safety rails to prevent derailment. At the northern end of the viaduct, surrounding the small station's wooden platform, the existence of four allied bomb craters stand as a grim reminder that this was a vital supply line for the Japanese.
One particular site on the 'Death Railway' warrants some explanation. It is a place called 'Hellfire Pass' located about eighty kilometres north west of Karchanaburi or Kanburi. Indeed it is especially noteworthy as it is now the official memorial to those who died on the 'Death Railway', and is an idea conceived by former Prisoner of War Torn Morris and funded as an Australian Bi-Centennial Project in 1988.
'Hellfire Pass', officially known as Konyu Cutting, is over one hundred metres long and up to seventeen metres deep. The majority of the cutting was dug by hand through solid rock, using crude cutting implements. Work on the pass started on ANZAC Day 1943, during the wettest monsoon season in many years. Yet it took one thousand Australian and British prisoners just over twelve weeks to excavate it and a series of smaller cuttings in the Konyu area.
Forced to work up to eighteen hours a day and exhausted beyond belief, the men would look down into the cutting at night and think that the illumination lamps resembled the fires from Hell.
During excavation of 'Hellfire Pass', the sound of the sledge hammers bashing against the steel taps would reverberate around the cutting, hence some Prisoners of War know it as 'Hammer and Tap' cutting. This laborious method of slowly chipping through the solid rock was used to drill two inch by one metre deep holes in which explosive was later packed and detonated to prize away the rock. This task was inherently dangerous. Firstly, injury could be sustained if the tap was not hit squarely either by splitting the skull or removing the odd finger of the tap holder's hand. Also, care had to be taken to feather the end of the tap, otherwise fragments would fly off and bury themselves in exposed bodies.
Blasting was usually done around lunchtime, sometimes without warning which resulted in showers of rock raining down on the largely unprotected prisoners. Apparently it was safer to be in the open during blasting because one had a better chance of avoiding visibly falling debris than if sheltering under trees when the debris could not be seen. Later when the cutting fell behind schedule, the Japanese brought in a compressor and three jackhammers.
Throughout the 'Hellfire Pass' cutting the rockface is still scarred by the drill holes. Even a broken compressor bit can be found in the eastern wall, where it may have been deliberately jammed nearly half a century ago. After the blasting of course the next backbreaking task was to remove the tonnes of earth and rock either to build embankments or to clear the area. This was achieved using a bag stretcher like device called a 'tanka' carried between two men. Typically each man had to shift at least a cubic metre of rock and soil per day, that equates roughly to two vehicle trailer loads.
Malnutrition, tropical diseases, cholera, worm infestation and a multiplicity of other ailments continued to take a high toll of Prisoner of War life. British, Dutch and Australian doctors toiled to save life and limb, but the Japanese refused to provide necessary medical stores, drugs and other supplies and displayed even greater cruelty and callousness in those areas where the work and conditions were most severe. Terry Beaton has been told by some Prisoners of War that certainly on one rare occasion the Japanese guards failed to hold the upper hand.
Apparently during the construction of the steel bridge over the River Kwae Yoi at Tha Makham a Japanese Sergeant's cruelty became intolerable. One day, when the other guards had gone to lunch the detested Sergeant was 'bumped' during a concrete pour. He fell into the fresh concrete mix in one of the midstream bridge piers where his remains lay this day. As desertion was not uncommon among the Japanese and Korean guards, especially where they had local girlfriends, tile disappearance of the Sergeant seems not to have been investigated.
Malnutrition was the biggest killer on the Burma-Thailand 'Death Railway' where the men were forced to work long hours at strenuous jobs with little food to sustain them. Each prisoner of the Japanese was supposed to receive about a pound and a half of rice a day, but the camp's allotment was frequently depleted by spoilage or by hungry Japanese guards. 'Sleepy' Hollow remembers that a typical day's food consisted of 'one cup of boiled rice or caffrocorn (a tenth rate millet) three times a day - if they were lucky'. Plain rice however could not supply all the nutrients the men needed. To get vitamins and protein, the Prisoners of War scavenged for herbs, ate the fungus off trees, and trapped lizards, snakes and even rats for which the Dutch perfected a form of curry. These men were therefore lucky to receive as little as 500 calories per day - about a quarter of what was reasonably required.
The fifty or so allied medical officers scattered along the 'Death Railway' did what they could to stem the rising tide of suffering and death caused by disease and injuries, but they had almost no medicine or equipment. Prison doctors like Captain Millard, now enjoying retirement in Victoria had to improvise: often a straight razor was the only instrument available to perform appendectomies and other emergency surgery; surgical gut was made from cattle entrails; blood transfusions were administered through bamboo pieces and stethoscope tubes. Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop recalls that the most difficult thing he ever had to do in these camps was 'to watch my men suffer, knowing 1 could do nothing to help them without the medical supplies we so desperately required. It was so hard deciding who must die so that others could live'.
The absence of drugs resulted in severe torment and pain. The slightest laceration was likely to cause ulcers. Dick Bartlett describes an ulcer on his right foot: 'My foot swelled to a terrific size and went blue/black, and when the ulcer had been cleaned out the orderly had a swab on forceps and with benzedrine scrubbed the ulcer. Gee, 1 went through hell. 1 just about tainted. For over two months 1 had to put up with it.'
The almost daily scouring of ulcerous sores with improvised instruments like sharpened spoons was agony without anaesthetics. On occasions the doctors would tip a little sulphuric acid on the wound. The resultant pain was usually sufficient to cause the patient to pass into unconsciousness. This would then provide the patient and doctor with a brief respite from the agonising process.
As the Prisoners of War, mercilessly driven by the fanatical Japanese engineers and guards fell behind schedule, the Japanese 'recruited' some 200,000 inhabitants of their occupied territories in the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' who were brought to reinforce the allied workforce. About half of these misfortunates died. Official records, such as they are, indicate that 30,000 British, 13,000 Australian, 18,000 Dutch and 700 Americans worked on the railway. Some estimates state that 18,000 Prisoners of War died during construction, while thousands more suffered lifetime disablement.
Oddly enough a Newsreel Film crew visited the prisoners in Burma on 6th June 1943. Mock funerals were filmed and the prisoners sang 'Bless 'em all'. But the crew doesn't seem to have reported the true circumstances of the prisoners and the treatment they were being subjected to. At this stage the Burma railway was also being subjected to an increasing number of allied bombing strikes which added to the toll of lives being lost.
By late June 1943 the anti tankers in Thailand noticed the presence of large numbers of Asian labourers, in particular Tamils. Even the Japanese could see that the appalling loss of life and increased incidence of sickness among the prisoners was taking its toll on their construction targets. Never mind any humane considerations. Cholera was rife and confirmed cases were isolated in a tent pitched in the jungle. The hospital such as it was served little purpose for sickness despite the best efforts of the medical staff. As the state of the men deteriorated further the worst cases were evacuated. This meant a tortuous trip by foot down the track back to Kanu where the conditions were even worse and rations even more scarce. Cholera bit into the thinning ranks of the anti tankers. Cliff Collett for example died in Kanu on 14th July 1943. Unless bed ridden and unable to stand the sick still had to work on fatigue parties.
Slowly the sick from Kanu were evacuated. For Alf Montfort his turn came on 31st July 1943. After the mandatory dysentery test and spraying with disinfectant his group moved off to Tarsoa where a growing number of the anti tankers were to be found. Among them was George Lancaster, Tommy Hallahan, Neil Collinson, John Blyth otherwise known as 'Guv Bligh', Don McRae and Fred Webb who was to succumb to the ravages ' of dysentery early in August. Thankfully food at Tarsoa was a little improved and the men gained some strength in anticipation of being moved further back down the line. From their open air, lice ridden huts they watched every day as up to five burial parties passed. For those with sufficient strength attempts at trading were undertaken as graft seemed to be the order of the day with the locals.
Some of the anti tankers at Tarsoa were told after lights out on the 22nd August 1943 that they would be evacuated by rail early the next morning. Little time was provided for packing - not that it presented a significant problem in view of their scant possessions, but some farewells would have been in order.
One anti tanker group left Tarsoa by train and endured a most hazardous trip to Chungkai, near Kanburi. At the new camp conditions were a little better with food in larger quantities. Allied Military Police also had some responsibility for order. Again it was soon apparent that the prisoners needed to have money to exist and a host of novel commercial enterprises were commenced; such as making and selling cakes, rolling cigarettes for the canteen, carrying bamboo at fifteen cents per three trips and selling tomatoes.
Although there was a good deal of monotony in the Chungkai camp the men regained some strength. There were still deaths however, such as George Airey who died on the 19th September 1943 and Cordon Timms a few days later. In these circumstances the deceased was wrapped in a rice sack and carried to the graveyard by his comrades, with a Union jack draped across the body. The pallbearers dug the grave, filled it in and erected a crude cross.
For those that remained, even in the somewhat benign environment of Chungkai the cancerous ulcers persisted even when disease was thwarted. As a result many men like Sergeant Bill Morison and Gunners L Jones and W Penfold lost limbs through amputation in an effort to arrest the spread of ulcers. Doug McKendrick was another that died from dysentery at Chungkai on 28th September 1943, a camp which at that stage witnessed over one hundred deaths per month.
Armistice Day 1943 and the Japanese allowed the prisoners to commemorate with two minutes silence at 11.00am. To add to the solemnity of the hour, Fred Thompson died at precisely that hour. Mail was received in dribs and drabs and helped the prisoners retain some modicum of self respect and hope. Invariably the mail was about twelve months old, but it was contact with loved ones and provided that precious commodity - news.
Red Cross parcels were few and far between despite that marvellous organisation providing more than enough to succour prisoners throughout Asia and elsewhere. One consignment which reached the anti tankers in late November 1943 consisted of twenty five cigarettes and less than two biscuits per man. Although the parcels varied they should have received packages containing ample cigarettes, sweets, clothing items, writing material and food for every man on a frequent basis. This never happened to prisoners of the Japanese.
Prisoner of War diaries were maintained in surprising numbers despite the attendant physical and mental pressures, not the least of which was the risk of severe punishment and probable death in the event of discovery by the Japanese. The diaries varied in length, tone and format of entries. Some academics and analysts have concluded that entries focussed on the essentials of the day, such as survival, food, work and climate. Further that diaries were or were not written for a host of psychological reasons.
Such precious documents are one of the few types of record available to form testimony to the assault on humanity performed by the Japanese captors. |
