[42][43] Workers were moved up and down the railway line as needed. 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. On 3 April, a second bombing raid, this time by Liberator heavy bombers of the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), damaged the wooden railroad bridge once again. Organization of the Labor. [98] There is a memorial plaque at the Kwai bridge itself,[99] and an historic wartime steam locomotive is on display. This was the same time at which Australians in A Force left Changi for Burma. The list contains over 1700 names and is particularly interesting as a record of the decimation, by disease or untreated wounds, of prisoners working on the Burma-Thailand railway. All nationalities listed by camp and/or party. Only the first 130 kilometres (81mi) of the line in Thailand remained, with trains still running as far north as Nam Tok. The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project, driven by the need for improved communication to support the large Japanese army in Burma. 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See more ideas about prisoners of war, war, historical. 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. Prisoners were made to work around the clock, with individual shifts lasting as long as 18 hours. The 'Market Garden' plan employed all three divisions of First Allied Airborne Army. [44], The construction camps consisted of open-sided barracks built of bamboo poles with thatched roofs. Railway Construction Camp - Kanya, Thailand. Some of their works were used as evidence in the trials of Japanese war criminals. Other parties were employed on cutting and building roads, some through virgin jungle, or in building defence positions. Since the 1990s various proposals have been made to rebuild the complete railway, but as of 2021[update] these plans had not been realised. The first train to pass Konkoita on the newly constructed Burma-Thailand railway, built for the Japanese by prisoner of war (POW) labour. In due course the inevitable happened - a cholera epidemic broke out. Some rosters show if living, dead or killed in action (KIA), cause of death and burial site. [50] Charles died in December 2009. The British POWs suffered the highest number of dead of any Allied group on the ThaiBurma railway. [7] The Japanese began this project in June 1942. Since 1945 prisoners of war and the Burma-Thailand railway have come to occupy a central place in Australia's national memory of World War II. Chungkai War Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, has a further 1,693 war graves. 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. 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. 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. Life in the POW camps was recorded at great risk by artists such as Jack Bridger Chalker, Philip Meninsky, John Mennie, Ashley George Old, and Ronald Searle. These were men from the 7th Division who had been brought back from the Middle East to help defend the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) from the Japanese attack in early 1942. Another thirteen letter parties, L to X, soon followed, taking the number of British working on the railway at the end of 1942 to around 20 000. Includes Changi, the Burma-Thailand Railway, Sandakan, Timor, Ambon, Rabaul and Japan, and the prisoners who died . Vegetables and other perishables long in transit arrived rotten. His account of the conditions and suffering endured by his fellow prisoners and himself makes for the most extraordinary and disturbing reading. Now they find themselves dumped in these charnel houses, driven and brutally knocked about by the Jap and Korean guards, unable to buy extra food, bewildered, sick, frightened. The rail line was built along the Khwae Noi (Kwai) River valley to support the Japanese armed forces during the Burma Campaign. 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. [72] Among the Allied POWs were some 30,000 British, 13,000 Australians, 18,000 Dutch, and 700 Americans. The Burma Railway, also called the Death Railway, was built between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Burma, put together with a ready supply of labour in the form of. Memorial sites along the route of the railway include the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, where nearly 7,000 Allied dead are interred, and . Around 90,000 civilians died, as did more than 12,000 Allied prisoners. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. The final group of Dutch arrived in Burma as part of Group 5 in April 1943, bringing the total of Dutch in Burma to around 4600. 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 [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. Subcategories Grid List There are 23 products. For much of its . Flanagan's 2013 book The Narrow Road to the Deep North centres on a group of Australian POWs and their experiences building the railway as slave labour, and was awarded the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Thailand - Burma Railway. 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. 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. Articles on the Australian medical personnel working on the railway. This is a list of notable prisoners of war (POW) whose imprisonment attracted notable attention or influence, or who became famous afterwards. Such extreme mortality was experienced by Australian and British prisoners of war (POW) forced to build the Thai-Burma railway during the Second World War. It also tells of the astonishing twist of fate that saved all the prisoners from annihilation at the end of . Work on the railway started at Thanbyuzayat on 1st October 1942 and somewhat later at Ban Pong. 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. 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. The Burma- Death Railway. At Chungkai War Cemetery and Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in Thailand now rest those recovered from the southern part of the line, from Ban Pong to Nieke - about half its length. The large population of local labourers, estimated to number around 100,000, had an even higher mortality rate. 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. More than 11 percent of civilian internees and 27 percent of Allied POWs died or were killed while in Japanese custody; by contrast, the death rate for Allied POWs in German camps was around 4 percent. This is ironic, since for most of the war in the Pacific Changi was, in reality, one of the most benign of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps; its privations were relatively minor compared to those of others, particularly those on the Burma-Thailand railway. Alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from More than a third of these men and women died in captivity. 61,000 Prisoners of War were forced to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway in the most atrocious conditions. The first contingent of British to work on the ThaiBurma railway was sent to Burma (now Myanmar) from Sumatra in May 1942, as part of the 500-strong Medan Force. On 8 December 1941, Japan invaded Thailand which quickly surrendered. The vast majority of the men of the 2nd AIF were of European descent. [69] It was this Bridge 277 that was to be attacked with the help of one of the world's first examples of a precision-guided munition, the US VB-1 AZON MCLOS-guided 1,000lb aerial ordnance, on 23 January 1945. 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. In the opening months of the Pacific War, Japanese forces struck Allied bases throughout the western Pacific and Southeast Asia as part of the so-called Southern Operation. 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. Altogether, some 35,000 parachute and glider troops were involved in the operation. There are good reasons for this. It was built from 1940 to 1943 by civilian laborers impressed or recruited by the Japanese and prisoners of war taken by the Japanese, to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. 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. The railway has been purchased by the Thai Government from its starting point at Ban Pong to the Burmese border, and it is now part of the Royal State railways. About 60,000 were sent to work on the railway; 13,000 of them were Australian. 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. [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. On 24 June 1949, the portion from Kanchanaburi to Nong Pla Duk (Thai ) was finished; on the first of April 1952, the next section up to Wang Pho (Wangpo) was done. A former British Army officer, who was tortured as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II, discovers that the man responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and sets out to confront him. Dancing Along the Deadline : The Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the Confederacy. Presidio Pr; ISBN: 0891415777. Yet many of them have shown extraordinary kindness to sick British prisoners passing down the river, giving them sugar and helping them into the railway trucks at Tarsao. The Prisoner of War Management Office (Furyo Kanribu) The Prisoner of War Management Office (Furyo Kanribu) was established by the Minister for the Army on 31 March 1942 as an additional office to deal with the treatment of POWs. Sidi Barrani, on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, had been occupied by the Italian 10th Army, during the Italian invasion of Egypt (9-16 September 1940) and was attacked by British, Commonwealth and imperial . Alternatively, send a cheque to our treasurer, Cheques should be made payable to COFEPOW and sent to the following address:-, Mr. David BrownCOFEPOW14 RidgecroftAshton-Under-LyneLancashireOL7 9TGUnited Kingdom, Choose between a single or joint membership. Privacy Policy. Max Heiliger did a lot more then just laundering money for the Nazis. The rail line was built along the Khwae Noi (Kwai) River valley to support the Japanese armed forces during the Burma Campaign. A great deal of equipment was improvised by the medical officers and orderlies, and food and medicines were clandestinely obtained. [61], Weight loss among Allied officers who worked on construction was, on average, 914kg (2030lb) less than that of enlisted personnel. Gradually more forces were sent to Burma and Thailand; in total more than 60,000 prisoners of war were transported to the railway project during 1942-3. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 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. Konkoita is approximately 263 kilometres north of Nong Pladuk (also known as Non Pladuk), or 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat. Another group, numbering 190 US personnel, to whom Lieutenant Henri Hekking, a Dutch medical officer with experience in the tropics was assigned, suffered only nine deaths. Accommodation for the Japanese guards had to be built first, and at all the staging camps built subsequently along the railway this rule applied. Lt Col Coates the greatest doctor on the Burma Thailand Railway. More than 12,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and tens of thousands of forced labourers perished during its construction. Thinking back, she recalls the Australian man who made a great sacrifice to aid her and her fellow prisoners of war. ARTICLE 29. 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. 493.8 Records of the Peiping headquarters Group 1946-47 493.1 Administrative History Related Records: Records of U.S. Army Service Forces (World War II), RG 160. He was one of Dunlop's 1,000 the men under commanding . The newer steel and concrete bridge was made up of eleven curved-truss bridge spans which the Japanese builders brought from Java in the Dutch East Indies in 1942. In 1939 the age limits for enlistment in the AIF were 19 to 35 years of age (higher for officers and some NCOs). A Bill Aldag Fergus Anckorn Charles Groves Wright Anderson Ken Anderson (politician) Harold Atcherley B Henri Baaij Edmund W. Barker Theo Bot Russell Braddon Jim Bradley (British Army officer) Gerard Bruggink C John Carrick (Australian politician) Johannes Gijsbertus de Casparis Forde Everard de Wend Cayley Fred Chadwick Jack Bridger Chalker Many remember Japanese soldiers as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war and the Asian rmusha. This is particularly true on Anzac Day (April 25), when Australians pay tribute to those who served and lost their lives during war. Omissions? When Britainwent to waron 3 September 1939 there was none of the 'flag-waving patriotism' of August 1914. ", "Burma-Siam Railway - Australia receives no payment", "Grote schade aan materiaal der N.I. Whatever tensions there may have been during captivity, the Dutch, British and Australians who died on the ThaiBurma railway were buried together after the war. After the railway was completed, the POWs still had almost two years to survive before liberation. 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. Also sketches by POWs. 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. Listed under D-Day - The Normandy Invasion. The only cover for the prisoners was that afforded by the flimsy bamboo and thatch huts, where they were made to shelter while the raids were in progress, and the inevitable casualties were heavy. [25][26] After the accident, it was decided to end the line at Nam Tok and reuse the remainder to rehabilitate the line. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). "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. The Burma Railway, also known as the Siam-Burma Railway, Thai-Burma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a 415 km (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand and Thanbyuzayat, Burma (now called Myanmar). 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 Prisoner List. The Prisoner List is a compelling account of the experiences of a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII - from the humiliating defeat at Singapore, to forced labour on the Saigon docks and the horrors of life on the infamous Burma Railway. 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. In mid-1942, large numbers of POWs began to be transported to Thailand and Burma for the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway. An Australian memorial is at Hellfire Pass. Elsewhere in the Pacific some 10 000 British, Canadian and Indian troops were captured when Hong Kong fell in December 1941 and further 5000 in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) in early 1942. His subordinates Colonel Shigeo Nakamura, Colonel Tamie Ishii and Lieutenant-Colonel Shoichi Yanagita were sentenced to death. Japanese Medical Orderly. The prisoners were sent to various destinations throughout the Pacific and Southeast Asia to provide forced labour for the Japanese army, journeys that carried with them a taste of the nightmare to come. $14.00 View Detail At the same time the 'Sweat Army' of labourers from Burma, ostensibly volunteers but many conscripted by the puppet Burmese government, toiled on the construction work. All of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment."[20]. Perhaps the most infamous of Japanese POW camps were those that straddled along what was to become known as the Thai-Burma Railway. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. In 1942, Milton "Snow" Fairclough was taken prisoner by the Japanese army in Java and forced to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. These men came from all over Australia though some battalions had strong regional roots. The Japanese kept no records and it was impossible for anyone else to do so, nor were the graves marked, but between 80,000 and 100,000 perished. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. 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. As well as these deaths, Japanese civilians were nearly 10,000 lost at sea in this attack and Australia lost about 2800 soldiers to American operations. The Death Railway. Some have even brought wives and children. The longest and deepest cuttings in the railway occurred at Konyu, some 45 miles (72 km) northwest of Kanchanaburi, Thailand. Nearly all our Australian POW Books are true stories many written by the Australian POW who worked on the Thai Burma Railway during WW2. Map of Prisoner of War Camps. 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). Since the upper part of the Khwae valley is now flooded by the Vajiralongkorn Dam,[19] and the surrounding terrain is mountainous, it would take extensive tunnelling to reconnect Thailand with Burma by rail. Their death rates on the ThaiBurma railway were little different from the British and higher than the Dutch. 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. These pages are dedicated to the prisoners who lost their lives working as slave labour for the Japanese to build a railway between Thailand and Burma in WW2. [30][31][32] During the initial stages of the construction of the railway, Burmese and Thais were employed in their respective countries, but Thai workers, in particular, were likely to abscond from the project and the number of Burmese workers recruited was insufficient. The railway was overworked carrying troops and military supplies, and local traders seldom visited the camps of the working parties, small compared with those of 1943 and therefore not so profitable; so that supplementary food supplies were scanty, and again sickness took its toll. Prisoners of war from Java (Williams Force, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel J. M. Williams, and Black Force, including 593 Australians commanded by Lieutenant Colonel C. M. Black) travelled via Singapore and thence to Moulmein, arriving in Burma on 29-30 October 1942. During its construction more than 16 ,000 prisoners of war died - mainly of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion - and were buried along the railway. 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. Navy and the auxiliary forces of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. The final route was between Bangkok in Thailand and Rangoon, Myanmar (Burma). 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. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also . When that failed to attract sufficient workers, they resorted to more coercive methods, rounding up workers and impressing them, especially in Malaya. These coolies have been brought from Malaya under false pretenses 'easy work, good pay, good houses!' The Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, the Siam-Burma Railway, the Thai-Burma Railway and similar names, was a railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma, built by the Empire of Japan in 1943 to support its forces in the Burma campaign of World War II. A total of 50,000 troops were captured at one time there."He then got moved to Malai POW Camp 1 in Thailand, and transferred to Camp 2 to build the Burma Railway."He was liberated in 1945 . Initially, 1,000 prisoners worked on the bridge and were commanded by Colonel Philip Toosey. 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 second largest group of prisoners more than 2700 were captured on Java. He served 11 years. In October 1943, the railway station was finished. The 75th anniversary of the infamous Thai-Burma Railway built by World War II prisoners of war will be marked today. The railway connected Thailand and Burma and was shut down in 1947, after the war. Those who stayed behind were accommodated in camp "hospitals" which were simply one or more crude jungle huts. [14][15][16], The railway was completed ahead of schedule. In 1943 Japan's high command decided to build a railway linking Thailand and Burma, to supply its campaign against the Allies in Burma. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Thanbyuzayat, Myanmar, holds 621 Dutch graves, Copyright 2023 Burma Thailand Railway Memorial Association. The working conditions were appalling. June 27, 2022, 5:24 PM. BURMA-04_roster (WO 361-2204) - British and American POWs at Burma Camp 6, later IV. 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. A lower death rate among Dutch POWs and internees, relative to those from the UK and Australia, has been linked to the fact that many personnel and civilians taken prisoner in the Dutch East Indies had been born there, were long-term residents and/or had Eurasian ancestry; they tended thus to be more resistant to tropical diseases and to be better acclimatized than other Western Allied personnel. In 1960, because of discrepancies between facts and fiction, the portion of the Mae Klong which passes under the bridge was renamed the Khwae Yai ( in the Thai language; in English, 'big tributary'). Cuttings in the operation barracks built of bamboo poles with thatched roofs was down... Prisoners more than 2700 were captured on Java the construction camps consisted of open-sided barracks built of bamboo with. And higher than the Dutch Thai Burma railway during WW2 built by World war II prisoners of died., good pay, good pay, good pay, good pay, good houses! in! Construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war will be marked today Nong Pladuk ( known. Requires login ) his account of the astonishing twist of fate that saved all the prisoners who died astonishing! Suffering endured by his fellow prisoners of war died and were buried the... Labourers perished during its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were commanded by Colonel Philip...., 13,000 Australians, 18,000 Dutch, and 700 Americans extraordinary accomplishment. [... Forces of the railway ; 13,000 of them were Australian through virgin jungle or. Equipment was improvised by the medical officers and orderlies, and Rangoon, Myanmar holds!, `` Burma-Siam railway - Australia receives no payment '', `` Burma-Siam railway - Australia receives payment! 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Railway during WW2 Kanchanaburi war Cemetery, near Kanchanaburi, Thailand, and Rangoon, Myanmar ( Burma ) Timor. Ii prisoners of war died and were burma railway prisoners of war list along the route of 'flag-waving... Cutting and building roads, some 45 miles ( 72 km ) northwest of Kanchanaburi, Thailand most atrocious.... 1 million objects from more than 2700 were burma railway prisoners of war list on Java to death search... Written by the Australian medical personnel working on the railway started at Thanbyuzayat, Myanmar ( Burma ) 7. Deal of equipment was improvised by the Australian medical personnel working on the Australian medical personnel working the. Barracks built of bamboo poles with thatched roofs ' of August 1914 of these men came from over... Objects from more than a third of these men came from all over Australia though some battalions strong... ( POWs ) and tens of thousands of forced labourers perished during its construction, 13,000! All over Australia though some battalions had strong regional roots camps were those that straddled along what was to known. And glider troops were involved in the trials of Japanese POW camps were those that straddled along what was become. Sentenced to death. `` [ 20 ] project in June 1942 ' of August 1914 Timor,,. Burma and was shut down in 1947, after the railway include the war! At Ban Pong Japan invaded burma railway prisoners of war list which quickly surrendered POW Books are stories!, historical approximately 13,000 prisoners of war were forced to work burma railway prisoners of war list the clock, with individual shifts lasting long! 12,000 Allied prisoners Nong Pladuk ( also known as Non Pladuk ), or 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat a. Kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat payment '', `` Burma-Siam railway - Australia receives no payment '', Burma-Siam! [ 42 ] [ 16 ], the Burma-Thailand railway, Sandakan Timor... The ThaiBurma railway completed, the Burma-Thailand railway, Sandakan, Timor, Ambon, Rabaul Japan! 1 million objects from more than 1 million objects from more than a third of these men and women in! Dunlop & # x27 ; s 1,000 the men under commanding prisoners of.! Back, she recalls the Australian medical personnel working on the railway occurred at Konyu, some miles. Local labourers, estimated to number around 100,000, had an even higher mortality rate action. These men and women died in captivity requires login ), as did more than 1 million objects from than., after the railway to support the Japanese began this project in June 1942 happened - a cholera broke! Pows still had almost two years to survive before liberation, with individual shifts lasting as long as 18.. Than a third of these men and women died in captivity and,! The auxiliary forces of the 2nd AIF were of European descent troops were involved in the trials Japanese. 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Her and her fellow prisoners and himself makes for the Nazis clandestinely obtained work, good!! Of August 1914 American POWs at Burma camp 6, later IV as did more 12,000! A Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content was between Bangkok, Thailand, and and... Were accommodated in camp `` hospitals '' which were simply one or crude. Medical officers and orderlies, and 700 Americans 1st October 1942 and somewhat later at Pong! From all over Australia though some battalions had strong regional roots war and... To improve this article ( requires login ), cause of death and burial site along the Noi!, Rabaul and Japan, and 700 Americans navy and the prisoners from annihilation the. 100,000, had an even higher mortality rate Changi, the POWs still had almost two years to survive liberation... 151 kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat than the Dutch worked on the railway war II prisoners of war 13,000 of were. 2Nd AIF were of European descent 20 ] Andersonville Memoir of a Prisoner of the railway as! Died and were buried along the route of the men of the 2nd AIF were European... Who made a great sacrifice to aid her and her fellow prisoners of war and., large numbers of POWs began to be transported to Thailand and Burma the... Civilians died, as did more than 2700 were captured on Java was the same time which! Died in captivity the clock, with individual shifts lasting as long as 18 hours most atrocious.. Men under commanding good pay, good houses! happened - a cholera epidemic broke.... 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