Remembering the Burma-Thailand Railway 80 years on
The prisoners of war who were forced to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway during the Second World War occupy an important place in Australia’s wartime history.
The terrible conditions and brutal treatment they endured serve as a reminder of the horrors of war.
The Burma-Thailand Railway was built 1942-43 with the intent of supplying Japanese forces in Burma. The sea routes previously used were vulnerable after the Allies prevailed at the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June 1942.
The Japanese aimed to finish the railway as quickly as possible, to supply their armies in Burma in preparation for operations against British India. To do so, they used some 60,000 Allied prisoners who had been captured from across Asia and the Pacific in early 1942.
When the labourers were unable to keep up with the timetable, the Japanese instituted the ‘Speedo’, a period of intense, almost around the clock work. Along with the prisoners of war some 200,000 rǒmusha (Asian labourers) were forced to work on the railway.
The workers battled gruelling conditions, starvation, mistreatment and diseases as they toiled away on the 415-kilometre stretch of railway. The largest and deepest cutting across the length of the railway is known as Hellfire Pass, where some 700 Allied prisoners of war died between April and June 1943 when work was carried out almost around the clock.
Bombardier Hugh Clarke of the 2/10th Australian Field Regiment, who survived the ordeal, said the railway ‘looked like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno’ as prisoners worked through the night by the light of flaming torches.
About 13,000 Australian prisoners of war were forced to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway, and by the time it was completed on 16 October 1943, some 2,800 Australians, 11,000 Allied personnel and 75,000 rǒmusha (Asian labourers) had perished.
The Japanese captured over 22,000 Australians during the Second World War. More than a third of these men and women never returned home.
Last month, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs’ Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre was among four winners to receive a gold standard award in the 2023 Thailand Tourism Awards under the Historical and Culture category. Located in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, the Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre and Walking Trail are dedicated to those who suffered and died during the construction of the Burma-Thai railway during the Second World War.
Today, 80 years on, we pause to honour their memory.
Lest We Forget.