Historical background'Death Railway'

In 1943 thousands of Allied Prisoners of War (PoW) and Asian labourers worked on the Death Railway under the imperial Japanese army in order to construct part of the 415 km long Burma-Thailand railway. Most of these men were Australians, Dutch and British and they had been working steadily southwards from Thanbyuzayat (Burma) to link with other PoW on the Thai side of the railway. This railway was intended to move men and supplies to the Burmese front where the Japanese were fighting the British. Japanese army engineers selected the route which traversed deep valleys and hills. All the heavy work was done manually either by hand or by elephant as earth moving equipment was not available. The railway line originally ran within 50 meters of the Three Pagodas Pass which marks nowadays the border to Burma. However after the war the entire railway was removed and sold as it was deemed unsafe and politically undesirable. The prisoners lived in squalor with a near starvation diet. They were subjected to captor brutality and thus thousands perished. The men worked from dawn until after dark and often had to trudge many kilometres through the jungle to return to base camp where Allied doctors tended the injured and diseased by many died. After the war the dead were collectively reburied in the War Cemeteries and will remain forever witness to a brutal and tragic ordeal.
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The - Bridge over the River Kwai - has a bloody history.

The first version of the River Kwai Bridge was finished in 1943 completely in wood. In April the same year the steel bridge -above- was constructed. The River Kwai Bridge steel segments with the bow are still the original one. The other shaped River Kwai Bridge steel segments have been put in place after the 2. world war.Estimates are that about 16.000 POW -prisoner of war- died during building the bridge and the railway to the Myanmar - Burma border. The Japanese army pressed the POW to have the 415 km railway finished in 16 month.
About 60 km south of Mawlamyine or Moulmeine in Myanmar , at Thanbyuzayat, there is also a large, well maintained war cemetery for thousands of Allied prisoners-of-war who died during World War II while constructing the infamous ‘death railway’ for the Japanese.

Overview & things to see around Kanchanaburi...

Passenger trains of the State Railways of Thailand still run over part of the Burma-Siam 'death railway', with two daily trains from Bangkok (Thonburi station) to Kanchanaburi and over the River Kwai Bridge to the line's current terminus at Nam Tok, see the timetable below. There's a third daily train between Kanchanaburi, River Kwae Bridge & Nam Tok. The line was built by the Japanese during world war 2, using forced Thai labour for the section from Nakon Pathom (the junction with the Bangkok-Singapore mainline) to Kanchanaburi, and Allied prisoners of war from Kanchanaburi onwards to Burma. Completed in 1943, the line was intended to supply the Japanese war effort in Burma without the dangers of transporting supplies by sea. Things to see include:
Kanchanaburi - the area's main town, with Allied war cemeteries. The best way to reach Kanchanaburi is to use the Death Railway itself, taking one of the two daily trains from Bangkok's Thonburi station. Train times & fares.
The Bridge Over the River Kwai - the bridge still exists, and is still used by passenger trains. The Bridge is 5km beyond Kanchanaburi, and has its own station at the southern end of the bridge, surrounded by cafes, shops and small museums. You can walk over the Bridge (trains permitting) or cross it by train when travelling between Kanchanaburi & Nam Tok.
Wampo viaduct (pictured above right) - also built by prisoners of war, and also still in use by regular passenger trains. The best way to see it is to take a train from Kanchanaburi or River Kwae Bridge station to Nam Tok. See video of train on this section.
Hellfire Pass - Beyond Nam Tok, the line onwards to the Three Pagodas Pass into Burma is closed and the track lifted. 80km (50 miles) beyond Kanchanaburi (approximately 10km or 6 miles beyond Nam Tok) is Konyu Cutting, dubbed Hellfire Pass by Allied prisoners. Here there is a museum, and a 7km stretch of the trackbed beyond Konyu Cutting has been cleared of jungle by the Australian government as a memorial. You can walk the length of this section if you like.

The Bridge on the River Kwai, the movie

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), the memorable, epic World War II adventure/action, anti-war drama, was the first of director David Lean's major multi-million dollar, wide-screen super-spectaculars (his later epics included Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965)).
The screenplay was based upon French author Pierre Boulle's 1954 novel of the same name. [Boulle was better known for his screenplay for Planet of the Apes (1963).] Although he received sole screenplay credit, other deliberately uncredited, blacklisted co-scripting authors (exiled Carl Foreman - who scripted High Noon (1952) - and Michael Wilson) had collaborated with him, but were denied elibigility. They were post-humously credited years later, in late 1984, in a special Academy ceremony. [When the film was restored, the names of Wilson and Foreman were added to the credits.

There is another cemetery at Ko Samrong where another 1,750 bodies were interred

After the railway was hurried to completion in 13 months' time, it was announced by the Japanese that a total of about 50,000 lives had been lost in the construction work, including 10,000 Japanese troops as well as 10,000 POWs and 30,000 labourers. But the number of POWs perished was later revised to be 12,399 by the Allied Powers and the actual death tool of labourers was estimated to be as high as about 90,000. So, for some sections of the railway at least, it is no exaggeration to say that one life was sacrificed for every sleeper laid under the track. Hence the nickname Death Railway.

Now the so-called Death Railway is mainly a railway for tourists. It takes you to picturesque countryside to see vast expanses of green fields, a breath-taking viaduct winding along a precipice, long ranges of jungle-covered mountains and a waterfall which is quite a safe place for even children to play in because the water volume is small and the rocks are not slippery. You will see the war cemetery just behind the Kanchanaburi railway station, where 6,982 bodies of British, Dutch, Australian and New Zealand POWs were buried. It is planted with planty of flowers and is kept tidy and clean. The inscriptions on the gravestones are simple but touching. There is another cemetery at Ko Samrong where another 1,750 bodies were interred. But it is a little out of the way and is not usually visited by ordinary tourists. The Japanese also built a small cemetery of their own near the provincial town.

Of course, you will also see the River Kwai Bridge and every section of the remaining Death Railway itself. They, together with the cemeieries, will remind you of the cruelty of war and the agonies suffered by thousands upon thousands of people. But since they have become part of history, you may just as well forget about them and enjoy the beautiful scenery presenting itself before your eyes.

The tourist train leaves the Bangkok railway station every Saturday, Sunday and public holiday at 6.35 a.m. The train arrives back in Bangkok at 7.35 p.m. For more imformation at State Railway of Thailand, Tel. 223-7010 or Tourisim Authority of Thailand

The railway was built to be parallel with the River Kwai

In a desperate attempt to establish an overland supply line, urgent construction of a railway leading from Thailand to Burma was ordered. Work started simultaneously on 16 Sep. 1942 at both ends of the line -- Nong Praduk and Thanbyuzayat. There were already in existence a railway connecting Bangkok and Nong Praduk (80 km. to the west of Bangkok) and another joining Thanbyuzayat to Moulmein and the rest of Burma.

In order to rush the work to an early completion, a total of 61,700 prisoners of war from Britain, Holland, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, and about 270,000 forced labourers, including Thais, Burmese, Malays, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians and Indians, were sent to work on the project. Their working conditions were extremely harsh. They had to work with simple tools in rugged mountains and deep jungles full of dangerous insects and animals. The weather was too damp and hot most of the time, especially for the Whites. In view of the urgency of the task, they were made to work more than 10 hours a day and 7 days a week but were give little to eat. And when there were epidemics such as cholera and malaria there was hardly enough medicine to go round. Consequently, only the strongest and luckiest survived the ordeal.

Bridge on the River Kwai

Tamarkan, Thailand. c. 1945.
Train crossing the wooden bridge which spanned the Mae Klong River (renamed Kwai Yai River in 1960).

Begun in October 1942, using prisoner of war (POW) labour, it was completed and operational by early February 1943.

Both the wooden and the adjacent steel bridge were subjected to numerous air raids between January and June 1945. POW labour was used to repair the wooden bridge on each occasion. Tamarkan is fifty five kilometres north of Nong Pladuk (also known as Non Pladuk), or five kilometres north of Kanchanaburi.