WAR CRIMES AND ATROCITIES (True Crime) (26 page)

Death Railway

1942–43

One of the most famous tourist attractions in Thailand is the bridge on the River Kwai, which was made famous by the 1957 film, starring Alec Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins. However, the bridge you see standing today is not the bridge that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and it is hard to imagine the suffering these people went through in order to build what became known as the Death Railway. The railway is not only testament to the cruelty of the Japanese during World War II, but also man’s bravery and determination, with approximately one in five prisoners dying during the construction.

Workers – no. employed – total deaths

Asian labourers – 200,000 – +/- 80,000

British POWs – 30,000 – 6,540

Dutch POWs – 18,000 – 2,830

Australian POWs – 13,000 – 2,710

American POWs – 700 – +/- 356

Korean and Japanese – 15,000 – 1,000

soldiers – 15,000 – 1,000

REASON
 
FOR
 
CONSTRUCTION

One of the main reasons for the construction of the railway was to overcome the reliance on sea transport as the only means of supplying Burma during Japan’s occupation in 1942. The sea route through the Strait of Malacca was prone to submarine attack and the Japanese decided an alternative method of transport was needed. The British had already considered a railway connection between Thailand and Burma, but it was considered to be too large a project. The Japanese, however, felt that it was possible and planned to start the project in June 1942, to connect Ban Pong with Thanbyuzayat. Engineers carried out a survey of the 415-km (258-mile) route and expressed considerable doubt about the economics of the project. However, with so much free labour at their disposal, in the form of Allied prisoners of war, the Japanese arranged for the construction to start immediately from both ends using metre gauge single track.

The route ran along the east bank of the Mae Klong River from Bangkok until it reached the Khwae Noi River. From there it had to cross the Mae Klong and run along the east bank of the Khawe Noi until it reached the mountains. It would cross the mountains at Three Pagodas Pass and then snake down towards Thanbyuzayat. Using this route meant they could utilize the rivers to help transport materials and men to the necessary sites.

The first prisoners arrived on 23 June, 1942, and started work by moving the tracks and sleepers from the disused yards of the Federal States of Malaya Railways (FMSR). The first bridge to be constructed was a wooden trestle across the Mae Klong. It was

220 m (240 yd) in length and was completed in February 1943. A second bridge, of concrete and steel construction, used semi-eliptic spans brought from Java, and this innovative piece of engineering was finished in July 1943. The two lines met at Konkuita on 17 October, 1943 after only 18 months of extremely hard work by both teams. The Burma teams built

152 km (95 miles) of track, while those from the Thailand end, a total of 263 km (163 miles).

RAILWAY OF DEATH

The Japanese were so concerned with getting the railway track completed that they gave little or no concern for the welfare of their prisoners. They pushed them to their limit on a project that had been estimated to take over five years to complete, and death became commonplace.. Many of the prisoners were little more than teenagers, and the cruelty and callousness shown to those working in the jungle camps was unimaginable. By early 1943, disease, starvation and sheer overwork had killed so many of the prisoners that the Japanese were forced to hire 200,000 Asian coolies to help finish the railway. The men worked from dawn until after dark and often had to trudge many miles through the jungle to return to base camp where conditions were appalling and often steeped in mud, particularly during the rainy season. There was little, if any, medical treatment available to the prisoners and many suffered terribly before they died. A hospital for malaria, dysentery, pellagra and beri-beri patients existed in name only. It was a basic, dilapidated bamboo-framed structure with a thatched roof, where the sick were placed to wait their eventual death. Occasionally, a man would recover from his sickness, but he was rewarded by being sent straight back to work.

The men’s diet consisted of rice and salted vegetables, which they were allowed to eat twice a day, but this diet was not enough to sustain them for the 16 hours a day they were forced to work, under atrocious conditions. Many of the prisoners were tortured, even for the smallest offence, and beatings became a regular part of their daily routine. If the Japanese guards felt a man wasn’t working to his full potential, he would be beaten savagely and was made to kneel on sharp sticks while holding a boulder for hours on end. Others were tied to trees with barbed wire and left there for several days without food or water.

One of the jobs given to the prisoners was to fell rubber trees and carry the logs back to the camp to fuel the cookhouse and the locomotives. The men worked in teams of three – an axeman and two carriers. Occasionally the men were able to buy food from passing native vendors, but if they were caught trying to smuggle it back into the camps by the Japanese they were severely punished.

After work each day the men would be told how many deaths had occurred while they were away. For each body, four prisoners would be enlisted to wrap the body in straw matting and carry it to the cemetery. This was sometimes a very difficult task because beri-beri caused a kidney malfunction, which resulted in fluid retention. Often a victim would have ballooned in size by as much as 136 kg (300 lb), which made them heavy and difficult to carry.

The only item of clothing they were allowed to wear was a Japanese-style loin cloth, and out of respect for the dead the men would try to cover their naked bodies with leaves. Others prisoners had the unenviable task of digging the endless graves and bury-ing the bodies, most of the time not knowing the identity of the man they had buried. All of these men probably had families back home, but all were buried in unmarked graves.

Right from the start the Japanese acted without compassion, and they could turn into sadistic executioners at the slightest provocation. It has been estimated that for every sleeper laid it cost one human life – a total of 120,000 sleepers where laid while constructing the Death Railway.

RAILWAY DESTROYED

After the railway was completed, the remaining 30,000 prisoners were housed in six camps along the railway track, so that could carry out any maintenance that was necessary. These camps were placed close to the bridges and other strategic positions along the line, so the prisoners became targets of Allied attacks. Many of the prisoners lost their lives in the subsequent bombing raids.

Both bridges were bombed by the Royal Air Force in February 1943. The prisoners of war made repairs and by April the wooden trestle bridge could be used again. It was damaged again in April 1943 by the US Air Force, which meant that repair work had to be carried out for a second time. Both bridges were back in operation by the end of May 1943. Another raid by the Royal Air Force on 24 June finally put the railway out of commission for the remainder of the war.

Following the surrender of the Japanese army from Burma, the British army took out 3.9 km (2H miles) of the track on the Thai–Burma border. The railway was in a poor state and when the British carried out a survey it showed that, due to poor construction, the bridge was not strong enough to support commercial traffic. The track was subsequently sold to Thai Railways and the 130-km (80-mile) section from Ban Pong to Namtok was rebuilt. It is still in use today.

The wooden trestle bridge, which was actually blocking the river, was removed, while the steel bridge was repaired by the Japanese. Beyond Nam Tok the line is still abandoned, and parts of it have been converted into a trail for walkers. There have been many plans put forward to rebuild the entire railway, but so far this has not been carried out.

MEMORIALS

There are several memorials that have been erected to remember the people who lost their lives during the original construction of the track. Right next to the steel bridge is a plaque and an old locomotive, and part of the original wooden bridge is housed in the World War II museum, also beside the modern bridge. Two other museums are in Kanchanaburi, the Thailand– Burma Railway museum, which opened in 2003, and the JEATH War museum. The best memorial is at Hellfire Pass, which was a land cut where a large majority of the prisoners lost their lives. The main cemetery is in the city of Kanchanaburi, with 6,982 prisoners of war buried there, mainly British, Dutch, Australian and American. There is a smaller cemetery with 1,750 graves a few miles outside of the city of Chong Kai.

The Japanese, who were wrong to have pushed their prisoners so far, openly admitted after the war that they were ‘overwhelmed by their tenacious spirit’.

China And The Yellow River Flood

1938

The Great Yu once said, ‘Whoever controls the Yellow River controls China’, and taming its water has proved to be a major undertaking for centuries. Even without the intervention of man, the river has cost millions of people their lives. When the Japanese blew up the flood dykes in 1938, the resulting flood engulfed three provinces and 44 counties resulting in the loss of 893,303 lives and the displacement of a further 3.9 million people.

BRIEF HISTORY

The Yellow River, or Huanghe, is the second longest river in China and gets its name from the muddiness of its water. Its source comes from the northern area of the Bayanhar Mountains in the Qinghai Province and finally empties out into the Bohai Sea in the Shadong Province. Over the centuries its changes of course have been spectacular and catastrophic, with 26 major changes in the past 2,000 years. As China became more populated, the floods of the Yellow River became increasingly dangerous and many attempts were made to control its flow. After a devastating flood in 1917, the Chinese government sought outside advice on flood management, but the discussions never really found a solution.

In 1931, the flooding of the Yellow River, due to the broad expanse of flat land around it, was described as one of the world’s deadliest natural disasters. It has been estimated that as many as 4 million people lost their lives, either by drowning, disease and resultant famine, although the precise figure is probably far higher.

Political turmoil, war with Japan and civil war prevented any further large-scale projects. After the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, there was a man-made disaster that was to surpass any of the previous floods.

JAPANESE ADVANCES

In 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army were making advancements in the heart of the Chinese territory, and by 1938 they had taken control of all of North China. They took control of Kaifeng, the capital of Henan, on 6 June and then threatened to capture Zhengzhou. Because Zhengzhou was part of a major railway network between the Long Hai and Jing Guang railways, the Chinese feared that it would endanger the cities of Wuhan and Xi’an if the Japanese takeover succeeded. The Chinese government decided to take drastic action and the Guomindang Authority burst the dyke at Huayuankou, near Zhengzhou City, in order to stop any further advancement by the Japanese.

The flood waters started pouring out of Huayuankou early in the morning on 9 June, 1938. The river, which was close to its peak annual flood, swept over 14,500 sq km (9,000 sq miles) of the plain, drowning thousands in its path. Millions of people were made homeless and all the devastation was for nothing – it didn’t succeed in stopping the Japanese army.

The situation was made worse by the fact that the Chinese government decided not to inform the public before destroying the dyke, for fear of the news leaking out to the Japanese. This meant that as the flood water submerged millions of homes, the people had no time to flee. Had they had prior warning it is possible that many lives would have been saved.

The dykes on the Yellow River were rebuilt in 1946 and 1947 and the water returned to its original course. Today, the Chinese are managing to control the floods on the Yellow River, but this could be only a temporary measure. The authorities are aware that another ‘100-year’ flood like the floods of 1761 or 1843, would be unstoppable.