A Visit to The Death Railway - Pt1 : Kanchanaburi War Cemetery

Today, we took a day trip to the infamous Death Railway in Kanchanaburi. We booked a whole day tour package with Discovery Asia and was very happy with the guide and the service. This day tour which included a 1.5 hour train ride and lunch cost TB900 per person as shown in the flyer below. Here's another tour agent which you may wish to look at.

Location of the above tour agency.

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The guide Uma was waiting for us when we arrived at about 6.55 am at the agreed meeting venue at Indra Regent in Pratunam. She was with the driver and 2 other passengers waiting for us in a 13-seater van.

The Death Railway is located in Kanchanaburi which is about 120 km west and about 2 to 3 hours drive drive from Bangkok depending on traffic conditions.

Our first destination was the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery. The Cemetery is situated adjacent to Saeng Chuto Road which is the main road through the town. When approaching from Bangkok, the cemetery is on the left side of the road, towards the far (northern) end of the town.

Past the arches in front, you see a few commemorative pieces ..

And inside, we see a well maintained garden with the graves of those who died during the construction and maintenance of the Burma-Siam railway (except for the Americans, whose remains were repatriated) were transferred from camp burial grounds and isolated sites along the railway into three cemeteries at Chungkai and Kanchanaburi in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Myanmar.

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).

There was a group of Thai students from a nearby school; they were there busy studying some of the graves and taking notes.

The war cemetery is only a short distance from the site of the former 'Kanburi', the prisoner of war base camp through which most of the prisoners passed on their way to other camps. It was created by the Army Graves Service who transferred to it all graves along the southern section of railway, from Bangkok to Nieke.

Next we head towards the JEATH War Museum.  JEATH stands for Japan, England, America, Australia, Thailand and Holland, representing the nationalities of the prisoners of war (POW's) who were forced to work on the construction of the famous "Bridge On The River Kwai".

The first thing that strikes you when you visit the museum is the bamboo hut with a collection of photographs displayed. The hut is a replica of the conditions the POW's were forced to live in.

The museum displays graphic images of the terrible conditions inflicted on the many young men that died and the many that survived to tell the story.To bring these atrocities to the public domain, the museum exhibits many photographs taken of real situations either by Thai's or POW's.

There are also many real accounts written by former POW's, their relatives, friends and authors that interviewed the many prisoners that suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.

After this, the next destination was the Death Railway.

Part 2.