Chapter 3:

Our First Engagement was in War: The Thai-Burma Railway

Micool Brooke

"Our first engagement with Asia was in war.”
Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating at Hell-Fire Pass, April, 1994.

Australia's first contact with Thailand on a large scale was through war – on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway – where more than 2,700 Australian Prisoners of War died building a 415km railway linking Rangoon and Bangkok in World War II.

Since the end of WWII, Thailand and Australia have fought together as "partners in peace" in several regional conflicts including the Korean War and Vietnam. Both Australia and Thailand conduct annual tri-service military exercises to further enhance their capacity to ensure peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

Because of Thailand's geographical location in Southeast Asia, and Australia's proximity to the region, military relations between Canberra and the Kingdom are very important to both countries. Australia spends A$5-million annually on joint training programmes and officer exchange visits. The Crown Prince of Thailand is one of many Thai officers who have graduated from Duntroon Royal Military Academy in Canberra.

The military relationship is a very close one, but had the winds of war not blown another way in WWII then Australian and British troops would have invaded the country to preempt the Japanese invasion in December 1941.

Prelude: The Need for the Railway

In December 1941, the British planned to launch Operation Matador in an attempt to deny Japanese access to all likely landing places in Thailand and northern Malaya. A shortage of aircraft thwarted the defence tactic and Japan's invasion of Thailand, then still Siam, was successfully completed within hours, even before most of the population realized the country was under attack.

Japanese troops invaded Thailand by land from Battambang in Cambodia, by air at Don Muang airfield and by sea in seven amphibious landings between Hua Hin and Pattani on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Despite savage fighting at several points in the south, organized resistance lasted only briefly.

Thai premier Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram ordered a cease-fire on the grounds that trying to resist the Japanese would be suicidal and, encouraged by Japan's rapid military success, signed a formal treaty of alliance on December 21 1941. A month later on January 25 Phibun declared war on Britain and America, an act opposed by many in Thailand. Minister to the Thai legation in Washington M.R. Seni Pramoj simply refused to deliver the declaration to the American secretary of state and formed the Free Thai Movement.

Thai historians have written extensively about how Phibun's confidence grew with every Japanese victory against the Western Imperialists and how on February 15, Lt-Gen Tomoyuki Yamashita's invasion force took Singapore, the bastion of the British Empire in the east.

The British Empire's last bastion in the East was crumbling. Prime minister Winston Churchill had just given the unprecedented order to fight to the death. But Singapore fell in February 1942.

A British force of almost 85,000 men surrendered lock, stock and barrel to about 25,000 Japanese veterans of the war in China. British war leader Winston Churchill called the fall of Singapore his country's most crushing military defeat in history, but for Japan it was the zenith of military success.

With the fall of Singapore, Japan captured not only a large work force but also invaluable equipment and machinery, including more than 300 locomotives, thousands of bogeys and hundreds of kilometres of track.

Most important of all the attack on Pearl harbour, despite immediate appearances, had not given the Japanese the invincible military advantage they had expected. The prime objective, destruction of the American aircraft carrier fleet Lexington, Enterprise, Saratoga and Yorktown, had failed. The fleet was at sea at the time of the attack.

Japan's military strategists, however, hoped to finish off the American fleet at Midway Island, 1,800 km northwest of Pearl Harbour, in a desperate gamble to salvage victory before American industry could turn the tide of war. But an American patrol plane spotted the Japanese naval force approaching the island on June 3 1942. When Japanese bombers took off from their carriers the following day American fighters and torpedo planes were ready. They sank four Japanese carriers and inflicted heavy damage on Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku's armada as it turned to retreat in humiliated defeat.

The Japanese High Command was forced to accept that naval superiority in the Pacific had become unattainable. This realization led directly to the birth of the Siam-Burma railway as a vital alternative to supply the Japanese army in Burma. It is not hard to understand the wider strategic attractions to Japan's military planners. The line would connect Singapore, Hanoi and Rangoon and, if the Siam-Burma stretch could be achieved, why not continue with a Burma-India track to connect with the vast Indian railway network stretching to what is now the Pakistan-Iranian border?

The Thai-Burma Railway:

Japan's plan to link Bangkok and Rangoon by rail in 1942 was not new; the British had surveyed the route at the turn of the century, but abandoned the idea as impracticable. But for the Japanese, well aware of the heavy price they would pay if they were defeated after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, no cost was too high for victory.

A plan for the railway was drawn up in June 1942. Death Railway Order Number One was issued by the Supreme Command of the Imperial Japanese Army in June, 1942. The one-metre gauge railway line followed the same route the British had surveyed in 1903. The line from Nong Pladuk passed through Kanchanaburi and crossed the Mae Klong river where it followed the Kwae Noi river to the Burmese border. From Three Pagoda Pass it travelled northwest to link up with the British line to Rangoon at Thanbyuzayat on the Burmese coast.

Construction of the Burma-Siam railway began at both ends simultaneously using British, Australian, American, Canadian, New Zealand and Dutch prisoners of war in addition to some 300,000 Asian slave workers -- the Japanese called them romusha -- rounded up in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, Vietnam and India. The French in Indochina came to a "diplomatic understanding" with the Japanese invaders and so were spared the horror of working on the Death Railway.

The Nong Pladuk to Konkuita construction was supervised by the Japanese 9th railway regiment with the 1st battalion commander in charge of surveying. The route through hundreds of kilometre of jungle-covered mountains was to involve the near-impossible construction of more than 300 bridges and trestles as well as several major rock cuttings.

The first batch of allied prisoners was sent from Changi Prison in Singapore to Thailand on June 19 1942. After a tortuous closed carriage train ride from Singapore to Thailand, Corporal Trevor Dakin of the 5th battalion Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire regiment, found himself one of thousands of allied prisoners of war assigned to the life-sapping task of building the Death Railway.

“ I was surrounded by so much death and suffering. This was when I learned to worship life. I learned to take one day at a time. I couldn't afford to think about yesterday or tomorrow, only what was happening today. Life seemed so cheap to the Japanese," he said.

Of the 68,000 allied prisoners who toiled on the railway, 16,000 died while of the estimated 300,000 Asian slave workers more than 100,000 are believed to have perished. The exact number of Asian workers who died while working for Japan's Labour Service Corps in the second world war may never be known; the Imperial Japanese army destroyed records at the end of the war.

The Japanese plan to build the Siam-Burma railway got off to a bad start when the Japanese general charged with turning the dream into reality died in an air crash while surveying the proposed route.

The death of the commander of the 9th railway regiment, Lt-Gen Shimada Nobuo, and 11 other senior officers in a plane crash in mountainous terrain near the Three Pagoda Pass was to have tragic consequences for both the Japanese and the hapless allied prisoners of war who were to pay with their lives for miscalculations made by Japanese engineers.

As a result of the failed aerial survey and the death of the most experienced and skilled engineers, much of the railway route was then determined by inexperienced junior Japanese army officers using a 19th century map and their own educated guesses about where the track should run.

In "A Life for Every Sleeper" Australian prisoner of war Hugh Clarke says the amateurish surveying and construction of the railway was not fully exposed until January 1943 when the Japanese realized the construction parties working from opposite ends of the line would miss linking up with each other by more than a kilometre.

And not even Death was to get a holiday from the Japanese until the line was joined at Konkuita, about 18 km south of the Three Pagoda Pass on October 17 1943. The dying and the chant of "speedo" stopped for a day as the Japanese celebrated their marvel of engineering by filming the driving in of the last spike and minting a medal for the railway engineers involved in the construction project.

The railway had been completed some 17 months after its murderous construction began, two months behind Japan's military schedule, a delay due in part to the line not following the best available route.

After the railway was completed, the work force was split into three groups. Those judged as being the fittest, boarded slow Japanese merchant vessels for the treacherous sea voyage to Japan, where they were to work in coal mines. But of the 10,000 men sent to Japan, as many as 3,000 are believed to have drowned at sea when the ships they were sailing on were sunk by US and British submarines. Former British POW Arthur Peddie was one such POW sent to Japan who survived the perilous journey and lived to see the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb standing like a ghost over Nagaski, in April 1945. Those in the second group were considered fit enough to be retained on the railway as maintenance crew. Up to a hundred of these men perished in the allied bombing raids against the railway and bridges across the River Kwae. Trevor Dakin was originally selected for Japan, but sudden illness ruled him out. He says life on the line at this stage was almost bearable. The third group of POWs were considered by the Japanese to be too sick to be effective labourers and were sent back to Changi Prison in Singapore.

A witness to a real hero:

Like most countries, both Australia and Thailand have nation heroes, or war heroes. But when heroes die they become legends. That's why they put Sir Edward "Weary Dunlop's ghost to rest in Thailand.

Sir Edward's dying wish to rejoin his comrades who perished on the railway was respected in 1994 when his ashes were scattered at Hellfire Pass by his family in the presence of friends, admirers and servicemen. Sir Edward died in 1993 shortly after receiving the Order of the White Elephant from His Majesty the King of Thailand. He was also knighted by Britain's Queen Elizabeth in 1979 for his "duty so nobly done" on the railway.

At the Anzac Day ceremony on April 25 1994 more than 400 people crammed into the hauntingly narrow confines of the eerie rock cutting at Hellfire Pass to pay their final respects to Australia's most celebrated war hero.

The assembly included Australian ambassador John McCarthy, New Zealand ambassador Phillip Gibson, Death Railway survivors and their families, as well newspaper reporters and television journalists from Australia. The ashes of "Weary", whose nickname is based on his surname (Dunlop tyres -- tired), were returned to Hellfire Pass by his sons Alec, 35, and John, 39. Dunlop Force, commanded by their father, had started work at Hellfire Pass precisely 50 years previously to the day on April 25 1943.

It was on this stretch of the notorious Death Railway that Australian surgeon Captain Dunlop, as he was then, performed the heroic deeds amid impossible conditions and intolerable suffering that made him a legend in his own lifetime.

The Bangkok-based Rev Monty Morris was a personal friend of Sir Edward and had conducted numerous memorial ceremonies for allied prisoners of war. He scattered the hero's ashes along a ten-metre stretch of track near the memorial plaque at Hellfire Pass at 5.45 a.m.

"There were so many men in the last of extremities and wretchedness," was how Sir Edward had recalled the camp at Hellfire Pass.

Candles were lit so Hellfire Pass again radiated the haunting atmosphere of the infamous "speedo" period of 1943. The eerie tomb-like darkness of the pass provided the Rev Morris with the perfect setting for an unforgettable memorial service.

In the flickering candlelight against a backdrop of creeping shadows, the restless spirits of Australian prisoners of war who died there seemed momentarily visible as they gathered to welcome back their old friend Sir Edward. They had not seen "Weary" since they died in his arms five decades earlier.

When the honour of meeting Sir Edward had come to me on Anzac Day some years earlier in 1991, I had seen him live up to his legend. Noel Moyes had come all the way from Perth to meet his father, Ken, for the first time. Ken Moyes is one of the 1,362 Aussies whose remains were brought for burial at Kanchanaburi War Cemetery. Understandably Noel was emotionally distraught. Seeing the younger Moyes crumpled and sobbing uncontrollably over his father's gravestone, Sir Edward and Australian ambassador to Thailand Richard Butler gently went to the man's side. After a quick brotherly embrace and a chat, Sir Edward and Ambassador Butler invited Noel Moyes to the traditional beer swig at the far end of the cemetery where his tears soon turned to cheers.

A talk with Sir Edward and other veterans gave him enormous support; these men understood his anguish. I saw "Weary" speak to him in a gentle voice, saying things which his father would have wanted to say from the grave to ease his son's pain.

This was the sort of man Sir Edward was. A man full of dignified sensitivity. The sort who not only forged ties between Australia and Asia but helped forge the ideals of the Australian character.

Those, like myself, who were privileged to meet Sir Edward even only once, were touched by his charm and magic. And although he is gone, his ideals and achievements remain to serve as an inspiration to the rest of us.

It was this kind of admiration for "Weary" Dunlop and other Australians like him that inspired the Australian government to fund the construction of the Hellfire Pass Memorial plaque.

Fittingly, the main address at the dedication ceremony for the memorial on April 26 1987 was conducted by Sir Edward himself, the former commander of the prisoner of war camp at this part of the line.

The permanent memorial, which Australian Prime Minister Keating visited in 1994, honours all the 100,000 people who died building the railway, allied prisoners and Asian slave workers alike.

A Thai Angel:

During a visit to Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in 1993 Australian trade minister Peter Cook recalled the heroic wartime deeds of men like Boonpong and Lee Soon. "Boonpong is just one of a number of individual Thais and individual Burmese who did much for our men... Human beings must and will continue to find the reserves of courage, endurance and decency to achieve a better world," he said.

Hundreds more allied prisoners would have died had it not been for the life-saving drugs provided at great personal risk by such men, he said. In an interview with Rafael Grant of the Bangkok Post in 1967, Boonpong explained why he helped the allied prisoners in their hour of need. “Most Thais hated the Japanese. They came ostensibly as guests, by agreement with the government, and behaved like callous masters,'' said Boonpong, a round-faced, soft spoken Thai of solid stature. “After the occupation, the government was angry, too, and aroused Thais against the Japanese. I hated them; they were so hard and impolite. Most Thais see Europeans as polite and they were very disturbed to see them tortured by the Japanese. For this reason many tried to help the POWs.”

He said he was moved to help the prisoners when he spotted an Englishman, whom he had known before the war, in the work force being assembled at Chung Kai in 1942.

“My friend, Mr Johnson, asked me for help. How could I refuse?'' he said. ``The prisoners would often give me cheques and, early on, I would walk the streets of Bangkok from company to company, trying to sell them.''

Boonpong also acted as a middle man, selling everything the prisoners had of value to get them drugs and medicine. “I was also the owner of a general store in Kanchanaburi, which was well known to the prisoners and the Japanese guards. I was friendly with the guards and gave them presents; so they gave me little trouble.

“But secretly in the store, blocks of raw tobacco were cut open, a cavity made in the centre, and money, radio parts and whatever else put inside. The block would be sealed and slightly marked so the PoWs knew which ones to choose.”

He said he was sitting in his store one memorable night when he heard the news by radio of the war's end.

“I was very happy to hear such news. That was a wonderful night. First thing in the morning I went to a camp on the edge of town by the railway. A group of prisoners were passing by in a train, on their way to Nakhon Nayok to dig graves when I started yelling to them ``War finish! Peace! War finish!''

``At first the Japanese didn't believe it. Then after a day or two they got the official word. Some of the weakened prisoners were so shocked by the news they died.”

Boonpong said what impressed the Thais most of all about the European prisoners of war was that after the war they did not avenge themselves on their former Japanese jailers. “There was no revenge as you might expect. It was very, very impressive. One of the most impressive things of the war to the Thai people.”

Another Thai Angel

Lee Soon operated the canteens in the allied prisoner of war camps which sold eggs and bananas to the hungry prisoners and supplemented their meagre daily food allowance. He quickly won the respect and admiration of hundreds of men who otherwise would have died without the life-saving medicine and food supplies he smuggled into the camps at the risk of his own life. He also smuggled in batteries for a secret radio. After the war the British awarded him the King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom while the Dutch royal family made him an Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau, an award given to courageous civilians.

Lee Soon was not a member of any organized resistance movement; his motivation to help those less fortunate than himself was purely humanitarian.

Lee Soon was born in Tae Chiew, China, in 1911, but in 1920 he moved to Thailand. In Bangkok he worked for Lever Brothers for more than a decade, perfecting his English and making contacts before the Japanese invasion in December 1941.

When the Japanese began collecting materials to build the railway Lee Soon set himself up as a contractor. He gained a concession to run canteens for the allied prisoners and with it the freedom to move around the base camps on the railway.

Lee Soon was deeply shocked by what he saw on his first trip to Chung Kai prisoner of war camp in July 1942. He wrote in his diary how the suffering and pleas for help during that first visit to the biggest prisoner of war camp on the River Kwae filled his heart with grief and despair. He began smuggling in supplies for the prisoners and his good deeds no doubt saved the lives of many Australian POWs.

Chung Kai was a major camp for sick and dying prisoners. Others, like Tarsao, were also filled with hundreds of men suffering from diseases such as gangrene that had followed the amputation of blackened limbs infected by jungle ulcers and other suppurating wounds.

Towards the end of July 1942 an allied prisoner with death written across his face approached Lee Soon for help. The man, Captain G.B. Adams, had been the manager of the Asiatic Petroleum Company in Bangkok before the war and one of the first prisoners to be moved to the River Kwae. Adams, who spoke fluent Thai, quickly encountered the hellish conditions of captivity under the Japanese and knew they were deadly serious when they told the labour force:

"Nippon very sorry -- many man must die."

At the risk of his own life, the sympathetic Chinese trader contacted Adam's Swiss business associates in Bangkok who provided him with money to buy medicine on the black market. The money made available by the Swiss came from British companies in Bangkok, like the Borneo Company, which had suspended operations after the Japanese invasion.

Lee Soon also used his own money, the security for which was IOU's from the prisoners or cheques drawn on British banks, but charged no commissions for this invaluable service. This system devised by Lee Soon and Adams enabled countless men to survive the Death Railway.

The Japanese had a way of running the camps which allowed them to make a profit, which explains why so many prisoners died of starvation. To encourage the labour force of allied prisoners and Asian romusha, the Japanese paid workers according to their contribution to the work effort. Sick men got half rations which meant they soon died of starvation.

The Japanese did provide some medical allowances and compensation for injuries sustained building the railway and forced only non-commissioned officers and enlisted men to work.

The prisoners used the "money" to buy extra food and cigarettes from the canteens at their camps. But the system was open to exploitation and the Japanese would sell essential goods to the prisoners at highly inflated prices.

By the end of August an effective network was in place and Lee Soon's humanity was already saving lives. Sir Edward described Lee Soon's network in his memoirs as "pennies from heaven." Without the medicine provided by Lee Soon he would never have been able to save so many lives and limbs, Sir Edward said later.

By this time the Japanese were becoming suspicious of Lee Soon's activities. Warned that the brutal Kempeitai were asking questions about him, Lee Soon coolly shrugged it off and continued to smuggle drugs and medicine into the camp `hospital'.

Had he been caught he would have been executed. Many prisoners would later recall his courage and the calmness with which he faced constant danger. Said 74-year-old British former prisoner of war Mark Quinn at the time of Lee Soon's death:

"He saved my life by risking his own. He was truly a very special man. His death saddens me greatly."

After his capture at Singapore, Quinn had been sent to Kanchanaburi's Chung Kai prisoner of war camp where with a hidden camera he took secret pictures of the conditions. He would have been beheaded if caught.

The pictures were intended to be used as evidence against the Japanese at war crimes trials after the war and it was only through Lee Soon that he was able to get them passed the ever suspicious Japanese.

Lee Soon not only smuggled the film out of the camp, but he also had it developed in the hope of sending the prints to allied headquarters to inform them of the plight of prisoners in captivity.

Because of increasing Japanese security checks Quinn gave the camera to Lee Soon who promised to return it after the war. When peace came Quinn was repatriated to England via India and never had a chance to collect his camera. The Englishman soon forgot all about it until a few years later when a letter reached him. It was from a man who asked him to call at a St James Street club in London where the hall porter had his camera and a message.

"This is to certify that Kodak camera lens No 1298337 and shutter No 3756200 is the property of Mr Mark Quinn, of London, a former POW on the Death Railway. I have asked Mr J.M. Evans to return it" -- Lee Soon.

The incident reminded the Englishman how Lee Soon had always been trustworthy in things both great and small.

After the war Lee Soon was not forgotten by those he had helped and men such as Sir Edward and Adams moved to ensure the actions of Thai underground helpers be recognized and money borrowed from them was repaid.

Both men lobbied Lt-Col Swinton, senior British officer at ex-prisoner-of-war headquarters in Bangkok, to help men like Lee Soon and Boonpong.

Lee Soon spoke little about his role in the second world war and asked for no special rewards or favours for his wartime deeds apart from help for his children's education.

In recognition of his services the Dutch government helped educate his first son and the British company John Thompson Ltd trained his second son Suchot in mechanical engineering.

Lee Soon passed away in 1994 aged 83, leaving a widow, four sons Suchart, Suchote, Suchai, Suchon and two daughters Suchada and Pantipa. He was cremated at Wat Tat Thong on Bangkok's Sukhumvit road on August 14 1994.

But newspapers in Britain, Australia and the Netherlands had not forgotten the wartime heroism of this Thai national. Before the obituaries appeared in the foreign press even Lee Soon's family, the Paleewongs, were largely unaware of the true nature of their father's courage; he had not wanted to burden them with his memories of the horrors he had witnessed at the Death Railway.

His eldest daughter Suchada Paleewong said:

"He was our father and we always knew he was special, but sadly we did not discover just how special a hero he was until after he died when the obituaries appeared in foreign publications and letters of sympathy came pouring in from all parts of the world."

"And the reason we knew so little about his deeds was that he never spoke about the unimaginable horror he saw in the prisoner of war camps along the Death Railway.

"My father was a unique man. He had a chest full of foreign medals, rode an old Harley motorbike until he turned 80 and once chased armed robbers down the streets of Bangkok dressed only in his pajama pants."

The Bridge

Pierre Boulle never worked on the Death Railway and so his book, much to the annoyance of many prisoners, fails to mention that not one but two bridges spanned the River Kwae in the second world war.

The original wooden bridge, which both Dakin and Gilbert helped build, was completed in February 1943 and the first train crossed the 11-span steel and concrete bridge seen today in June of the same year. The bridge, plundered by the Japanese from an oil field in Java and transported in pieces to Kanchanaburi, crossed the Mae Klong. The railway line then followed the east bank of the Kwae Noi river almost to the Burmese border.

The part the river where the remaining bridge stands, about two kilometres north of where the Kwae Yai (big Kwae) joins the Kwae Noi (small Kwae) to form the Mae Klong, was later renamed in English "River Kwai" following the success of the book and film.

In Thai the two smaller rivers are still known by their correct name, Kwae, meaning "tributary". Boulle not only changed the spelling but also the meaning of the name of the rivers. In Thai kwai means "buffalo".

The Mae Klong becomes larger after Kanchanaburi and flows into the Gulf of Thailand at Samut Songkhram, a fishing port some 70 km southwest of Bangkok. Allied bombing raids to destroy the two Kanchanaburi bridges began in late 1944 but it was not until February 1945 that both were temporarily knocked out.

Repaired by allied prisoners, the wooden bridge was hit again in April and the steel bridge in June. Destruction of the bridges was by then interrupting Japan's supply route to Burma. The service bridge was finally destroyed on April 2 1945 by B24 bombardier Lt-Col Bill Henderson.

Many visitors to Kanchanaburi today are surprised, some perhaps even disappointed, to learn that the story created by Pierre Boulle is indeed only fiction. The British commander played by Alec Guinness in the movie who supposedly foils a plot by allied commandos to dynamite the bridge existed only in Boulle's literary imagination.

Many survivors have written in their memoirs or unit histories how the Japanese, despite their propaganda, became so convinced that an allied invasion was imminent that they drew up plans to execute all allied prisoners.

"The swimming pools the Japanese made us dig, in the mistaken belief they weren't such savages after all, were actually mass graves for prisoners. We were to be lined up and machine gunned," wrote Weary Dunlop.

After the railway was completed, the work force was split into three groups. Those judged as being the fittest were sent to Japan. Those in the second group were considered fit enough to be retained on the railway as maintenance crew. While the third group of POWs were considered by the Japanese to be too sick to be effective labourers and were sent back to Changi Prison in Singapore. Chick Warden of Sydney, Australia stumbled into Changi as a walking skeleton before collapsing in his friend's arms.

In 1944, with an allied victory looming, prison authorities arranged for his escape. He returned briefly to his plantation but was later to go back to France to start a career as a writer.

It was also in 1944 that the British began to take the offensive in Burma, where Thai troops were fighting alongside the Japanese. On the home front Thailand was coming under increasingly frequent allied bombing raids which did nothing to ease concern about the course of the war. It was becoming apparent that Phibun had led Thailand into the war on the wrong side. On July 24 1944 Phibun suffered a political setback and resigned.

His successors, under the nominal leadership of Khuang Aphaiwong but strongly influenced by the Free Thai movement of Pridi Phanomyong, made peace feelers toward the allies in hope of avoiding avoid accusations of Thai collaboration with Japan and a possible allied judgment of Thailand as an enemy nation.

War ends, peace begins:

At the beginning of 1945, Australia's captain Edward `Weary' Dunlop scratched a few lines into his diary about the prisoners' well-founded fears that the Japanese would massacre them at the first sign of an allied landing in Thailand, or at the wars' end. He writes of `mounting tension and highly sinister overtones.' He notes the camps, for the first time, were completely surrounded by a two and a half metre embankment and that Japanese guards patrolled the its flat top. Watch towers with machine guns facing inwards marked each corner. A Korean guard actually warned Dunlop that the Emperor had ordered all POWs to be put to death in the event of an allied invasion of Thailand. The swimming pools the Japanese had ordered dug were actually mass graves. Dunlop and other POWs were then surprised to see, that from about July 1945, that the Japan began to tentatively observe the Geneva Convention, by giving out Red Cross parcels. Then August arrived and strange rumours began to spread through the POW camps like wildfire. Korean guards had heard a story that the allies had dropped a super bomb on Hiroshima, killing 100,000 people. The surrender rumours persisted. On August 15 they got the word from the Japanese, not that Japan had surrendered, just that the war had concluded and they were no longer POWs. Dunlop recalls unforgettable scenes of joy as allied POWs celebrated the end of the war and their harrowing captivity under the Japanese by singing and cheering. Weary says he felt “like a king''.

Other veterans have their own unique memories of how their nightly dream of freedom for the past three years had suddenly become reality. Chic Warden, who was captured in Singapore with the 2nd/19th battalion of the Australian Imperial Force, remembers the Thais gave him and other POWs some whiskey and lime juice. “Oh Christ we got pissed that day. It was just before my 21st birthday and I really enjoyed getting rotten drunk. I'll never forget the Thais for that,” he recalled with a smile. Trevor Dakin said his initial euphoria was replaced by remorse for those who died before liberation. “I cried with joy, then remorse for our chums who wouldn't be coming home with us.'' But in direct contrast to the joy of the allied POWs, was the deathly shame of the Japanese. Nagasi Takashi said he was told of the surrender by a Japanese deserter. ``When I heard those words the entire railway seemed to stand up and sway. That was my world going upside down. We were told we could not lose the war, that it was in fact already won.'' Repatriation came quickly for the allied POWs. For the most part they were flown to India with one or two weeks of the surrender, where they were carefully fed a proper diet to enable them to put back on the weight they had lost toiling on the railway.

After Japan's formal surrender aboard the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2 1945, British engineers surveyed the Death Railway but, despite its terrible cost in human life, found it to be in an appalling state of decay and totally unsafe for civilian traffic.

The victorious allies forced Japanese soldiers to work as labourers, ripping up dangerous parts of the line and wobbly trestle bridges which in wartime had been considered a necessary risk. Despite the gestures of Khuang Aphaiwong's cabinet it had been only strong American pressure that prevented a vengeful Churchill from taking punitive measures against Thailand after the Japanese surrender.

Thailand was lucky in other ways, too. Historians have pointed out how only America's use of two atomic bombs against Japan to end the war spared Thailand the bloodshed of being the last battlefield the Imperial Japanese army expected it to be.

Because of the hopeless state of the railway, the British government decided to sell the 303 km of the line in Thailand to the government in Bangkok for 50 million baht. The proceeds were shared among the survivors.

After the war the remains of the wooden service bridge were dismantled and only about 10 metres remain on the right bank of the Kwae Yai. It can be seen from floating restaurants and reached through the back of the War Museum. Nothing remains on the left bank, although I did find what appeared to be the remains of a sleeper on a small embankment.

The steel bridge seen today has been modified since the end of the war in part by a Japanese firm which repaired the bridge and added two longer central spans as part of Japan's war reparation payments. The new part is clearly distinguished by the two central rectangular spans. The original, one-metre gauge railway has been left in place on the bridge to give an accurate picture of the Death Railway. The new gauge is half a metre wider.

In the late 1940s the State Railway of Thailand set about bringing parts of the railway back to life, using heavier rails and concrete as well as wooden support pillars. The section of track from Nong Pladuk to Kanchanaburi was reopened in June 1949. The next section to Wampo was opened in April 1952. The final stretch to Nam Tok was completed in July 1957, the same year the movie won its academy award. The railway, which serves rural villages as it passes through beautiful landscape, is also popular among international tourists.

A Burmese government proposal in the early 1990s to rebuild the entire 415 km of track aroused interest among a number of Japanese investment companies. The proposal also won approval from a number of veterans who believe the Death Railway should live again so that those who perished building it did not die in vain. Today's much visited bridge on the River Kwae bears little resemblance to the bamboo structure blown up so spectacularly in David Lean's epic. The bamboo movie prop was built at a cost of 25,000 pounds on the Kelani River in Sri Lanka and was blown sky high with several tons of dynamite.

Hellfire Pass

Australian soldiers gave Hellfire Pass its name because, viewed from above at night as prisoners worked by candlelight, the rock cutting did indeed look like the jaws of hell. This five-kilometre stretch of track from Hellfire Pass to Hin Tok station cost more lives than any other; at least 400 of the 1,000-man work force there died.

A modern stairway, about 30 metres from the highway, leads to the old abandoned railway line which sits on a natural rock ledge some 175 metres above the Kwae valley and the whispering Kwae Noi river. But Hellfire Pass has its own eerie way of reminding visitors of the human cost. At the entrance to the cutting, 80 km from Kanchanaburi town, the sound of hundreds of cicadas suddenly fill the air. The noise starts as you step into the cutting and is amplified to an ear-piercing level as it echoes down the valley. It reaches a crescendo and then stops as suddenly and as mysteriously as it started.

From the Australian government-funded memorial at Hellfire Pass, the vaguely distinguishable route of the railway track disappears into dense jungle after about 20 metres. This is where the first trestle bridge seems to lead to nowhere other than the heavens above. For many hapless souls it did just that.

Every railway sleeper scattered along the Death Railway cries out in mute testimony to the sufferings of the men who died building the Burma-Siam railway for the emperor of Japan. Railway sleepers and an elevated platform of rocks that supported the railway tracks from 1942 to 1945 remain as immortal witnesses to the atrocities, disease and hardship that combined to kill, not only allied prisoners and Asian slave workers, but also an unknown number of Japanese engineer corps soldiers. The figure inexplicably ranges between 80 and 1,000.

Cemeteries

Stepping into Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is like walking into the Garden of Eden. Visitors are greeted by brilliant sunshine, a cool breeze and the dream-inducing smell of exotic and beautiful flowers. The misery, sorrow and gloom surrounding the needless deaths of those who rest in peace there is not evident at the well-kept cemeteries in Kanchanaburi where every gravestone tells its own tragic and moving story.

Amid this beauty and tranquillity it becomes hard to imagine the pain and suffering that destroyed so many lives so close by. Two of the three cemeteries containing the remains of the 16,000 allied prisoners who perished building the Death Railway are located in Kanchanaburi. The other is at Thanbyuzayat in Burma. These graves are so impeccably maintained by the Commonwealth Graves Commission that many visitors admit to experiencing a deep spiritual feeling as they stroll around the gravestones that speak so eloquently of the colossal human sacrifice made in the name of the emperor.

But vengeance is the right of the victor and after the war the triumphant allies forced the Japanese to dig up every dead prisoner of war dumped in jungle graves along the entire length of the Death Railway and relocate their remains in one of the three designated cemeteries.

The main cemetery on Saengchuto road in Kanchanaburi, just 4 km before the bridge, contains the graves of 6,982 men. This cemetery, opposite the former site of the Japanese railway regiment, contains the remains of 3,568 British, 1,896 Dutchmen, and 1,362 Australians.

The Japanese officer held responsible for some of the atrocities, Lt Takasaki Shinji, was hanged after being judged guilty at the War Crimes Trial conducted in Singapore in 1946.

Official records say 32 railway guards and engineers were found guilty of war crimes and were sentenced to death by hanging or long prison terms. For the living, the pain and remorse of losing a loved one is yet to go away and an inner need, mixed with pain and sorrow, still motivates people from faraway lands to visit their long gone, but never forgotten relatives whose souls reside in Kanchanaburi's war cemeteries. They come to the garden-like cemeteries out of love, out of respect, even out of pride, but mainly because they feel it is the right thing to do. It is the closest they can ever be. And yet words are not enough, nor are the tears that evaporate almost instantly under the sun's burning rays.

A visit to Kanchanaburi War Cemetery sums up the human tragedy of the Death Railway. Each headstone documents precisely the pain that the railway's construction involved.

The year 1942 mercifully shows only occasional death rates, while 1943 reveals a noticeable increase from January to April, followed by a horrendous number of deaths from May to December.

The frantic pace, which the Japanese called "speedo", killed many men as can now be seen in rows of graves in cemeteries in Kanchanaburi. About 10 to 15 rows on the left side of Kanchanaburi War Cemetery show that most prisoners died in late June and early July 1943, while another row nearby shows they dropped like flies in a ten-day period from July to early

August 1943. January to April 1944 shows another merciful reduction. The period from May to December again reflects a sharp increase in deaths among the maintenance groups as the allies began bombing missions against the Death Railway.

January to April 1945 shows another happy decline, only to be followed by another sharp increase between May and August as prisoners were forced to try to repair air raid damage. Some gravestones bear dates after Japan's surrender.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission records show that of the 3,771 graves in Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery in Burma, all but 20 per cent died in 1943. All the graves convey moving inscriptions such as "He Died For Freedom," or "Duty Nobly Done" and "Forever England".

The graves of men executed for trying to escape are also located here. Among those are British officers Captain E.C. Pomeroy and Lt D. Howard of the 2/12 Frontier Force Rifles. These two men, along with four infantry privates escaped from Kanchanaburi camp during the height of the cholera epidemic in 1943. But they were rounded up after two months stumbling blindly in the jungle. The four privates were shot immediately they were recaptured while the two British officers were marched off into the jungle and bayoneted. After the war their shallow, jungle-covered graves were located and their remains taken to Kanchanaburi.

Only a handful of allied POWs successfully escaped. Two Dutch PoWs are known to have reached safety, but only because one of them, B.N. Tuinenburg, had the great luck of having a Siamese mother. His ability to speak fluent Thai no doubt helped him appeal to the villagers on a genuine and sincere level. Although the Thais were not fond of the Japanese, some of them might have been tempted to turn in an escaped POW for the reward.

Nearby Chung Kai War Cemetery holds 1,384 British and 313 Dutchmen. The cemetery in Burma has 1,588 British, 622 Dutchmen and 1,348 Australians. Of the 356 Americans who died all were repatriated to the United States.

Chung Kai, located across the river on the site of a major prisoner of war camp and bordered by lush, tall foliage, is superbly maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Both Australian prime minister Keating and Dutch prime minister Lubbers laid wreaths for the war dead at the Kanchanaburi cemeteries in separate commemoration ceremonies during 1993 and 1994. They were but two of a host of high level government officials from a many nations who have made pilgrimages to the River Kwae war cemeteries.

Final Tribute

Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating's emotional tour in April 1994 was conducted with military precision. In a scene reminiscent of the movie "Apocalypse Now", three Thai army helicopters carrying Keating's delegation from Bangkok landed in the football field opposite Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, site of the Japanese army headquarters during the war.

Emerging from a dust storm created by the rotors of two Chinook helicopters and the prime minister's Huey, Keating and his party of Australian VIPs, military officers, journalists and Thai officials walked into the cemetery to inspect the graves of some of the 7,000 allied prisoners buried there.

After laying a wreath at the cenotaph, Keating made a ten-minute speech in which he praised the heroism of Thais who supplied food and medical supplies to sick allied prisoners, saving many from death. He said

“This place serves to remind us of the courage and sacrifice of a former generation. The Death Railway has come to symbolize courage and sacrifice by men. The ability to endure gave the Australian character another valuable trait…. This is a lesson of sacrifice and suffering with the theme of respect for those who died and those who survived by displaying unique characteristics in difficult times. Sir Edward Dunlop is one such man who with the help of many Thais saved thousands of lives.

"No Australian of his generation is more universally admired than Weary Dunlop," Keating said, praising the late doctor's efforts to improve understanding between nations.

"Thousands of allied prisoners survived captivity here because many heroic Thais like Boonpong gave Dunlop and other doctors invaluable food and medical supplies. It is to these people that we also owe respect."

Keating concluded his first speech by relating his feelings about being at the cemetery which, although well-kept and visually beautiful, was nevertheless haunting and filled with memories of pain and anguish.

"When I walked along the rows of graves I saw that three men had died on my birthday, January 18 1944, which made me think about their sacrifice and how it is the duty of future generations of Australians to know what these men endured and why.

"Our first engagement with Asia was in war. It is an engagement now not only in peace but in partnership."