Tuesday Treasures

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.

Our World Tuesday

February 2015 - Kanchanaburi Thailand

Across a side road from the cemetery, is the Thailand–Burma Railway Museum about the railway and the prisoners who built it.

The museum does not allow photography.

The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar).

Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre. The Japanese aimed at completing the railway in 14 months and work began in October 1942. The line, 424 kilometres long, was completed by December 1943.

To learn more, there are a few movies available.

Better known to most of us is the movie Bridge on the River Kwai, that bridge is part of the Death Railway.

The Bridge on the River Kwai really exists, and still carries regular local passenger trains from Bangkok as far as Nam Tok.

Allied Forces bombed the iron bridge in 1944. Three sections of Bridge River Kwai were destroyed. The present bridge has two of its central spans rebuilt. The original parts of the bridge are now displayed in the War Museum.

As we had lunch we saw this train on the same tracks these prisoners built.