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The Burma Railway is a 415 km line between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar), built by the Empire of Japan during World War II, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.
Forced labour was used in its construction. About 180,000 Asian labourers and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) worked on the railway. Of these, around 90,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died as a direct result of the project. The dead POWs included 6,318 British personnel, 2,815 Australians, 2,490 Dutch, about 356 Americans and a smaller number of Canadians.
A railway route between Thailand and Burma had been surveyed at the beginning of the 20th century, by the British government of Burma, but the proposed course of the line — through hilly jungle terrain divided by many rivers — was considered too difficult to complete.
In 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma from Thailand and seized it from British control. To maintain their forces in Burma, the Japanese had to bring supplies and troops to Burma by sea, through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, and a different means of transport was needed. The obvious alternative was a railway. The Japanese started the project in June 1942.
They intended to connect Ban Pong with Thanbyuzayat, through the Three Pagodas Pass. Construction started at the Thai end on 22 June 1942 and in Burma at roughly the same time. Most of the construction materials for the line, including tracks and sleepers, were brought from dismantled branches of the Federated Malay States Railway network and from the Netherlands East Indies.
On 17 October 1943, the two sections of the line met about 18 km (11 miles) south of the Three Pagodas Pass at Konkuita (Kaeng Khoi Tha, Sangkhla Buri district, Kanchanaburi Province). Most of the POWs were then transferred to Japan. Those left to maintain the line still suffered from the appalling living conditions as well as Allied air raids.
The most famous portion of the railway is probably Bridge 277 over the Khwae Yai River (Thai แควใหญ่, English "big tributary"). (The river was originally known as the Mae Klong and was renamed Khwae Yai in 1960.) It was immortalized by Pierre Boulle in his book and the film based on it: The Bridge on the River Kwai. However, there are many who say that the movie is utterly unrealistic and does not show what the conditions and treatment of prisoners was really like.[2] The first wooden bridge over the Khwae Yai was finished in February 1943, followed by a concrete and steel bridge in June 1943.
According to Hellfire Tours in Thailand, "The two bridges were successfully bombed on 13 February 1945 by the Royal Air Force. Repairs were carried out by POW labor and by April the wooden trestle bridge was back in operation. On 3 April a second raid by Liberator bombers of the U.S. Army Air Forces damaged the wooden bridge once again. Repair work continued and both bridges were operational again by the end of May. A second raid by the R.A.F. on 24 June put the railway out of commission for the rest of the war. After the Japanese surrender the British Army removed 3.9 Kilometers of track on the Thai-Burma border. A survey of the track had shown that its poor construction would not support commercial traffic. The track was sold to Thai Railways and the 130-km Ban Pong--Namtok section relaid and is in use today.
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The Burma railway part 3 of sixby alanheath35,715 views
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