WHAT’S THE STORY?
IT was 75 years ago today that the world’s most infamous railway was completed. Japanese soldiers and engineers supervised thousands of Allied soldiers and Southeast Asian slave labourers as the final links were cemented between the two halves of the Burma Railway, aka the Death Railway.

There will be commemorations of the anniversary in the UK, Australia and across Asia, but not in Japan where the history of the railway is not taught.

WHAT ARE THE FACTS?
THE construction of the 415km (258 miles) railway between Ban Pong in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Myanmar (Burma) led to the deaths of more than 12,000 Allied soldiers out of a total captive workforce of 60,000. Southeast Asian labourers pressed into slavery to work on the railway fared even worse – some 90,000 out of around 200,000 of them died.

The Death Railway has become infamous for the stories of horrendous Japanese cruelty meted out to the workforce. The punishment regime in particular was utterly brutal with torture and executions commonplace.

Far more lives were lost to disease as the Japanese kept medicines for themselves.

WAS THERE REALLY A BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI?
THE most infamous of the bridges on the Death Railway spanned the Khwae Noi River — the River Kwai — in Kanchanaburi, a western province of Thailand bordering Myanmar. As in the famous film, the first of these River Kwai bridges, completed in February 1943, was fashioned entirely out of wood.

A stronger steel and concrete bridge was completed in April 1943. That bridge operated until 1944, when Allied bombers blew out two of the bridge’s central spans. They were rebuilt and the bridge is now a tourist destination, though many people come to visit the graves of the 7000 prisoners of war buried nearby.

A HELLFIRE PASS
A CUTTING just 75 metres long and 25 metres deep, emaciated prisoners cut away at the stone, working at night time lit by lamps and fires.

One soldier recalled: “So you have the flickering light, the noise and this is why for the prisoners who worked there, it reminded them of a scene from hell – from Dante’s Inferno – so they named it ‘Hellfire Pass’.”

Working in 18-hour shifts, it took six weeks to build in the spring of 1943. Its construction alone cost the lives of some 700 Australians.

AS A FEAT OF ENGINEERING HOW IS THE RAILWAY VIEWED?
BASHAR Altabba, a structural engineer, said on the PBS documentary Secrets Of The Dead: Bridge On The River Kwai: “What makes this an engineering feat is the totality of it, the accumulation of factors.

“The total length of miles, the total number of bridges — over 600, including six to eight long-span bridges — the total number of people who were involved (one-quarter of a million), the very short time in which they managed to accomplish it, and the extreme conditions they accomplished it under.

“They had very little transportation to get stuff to and from the workers, they had almost no medication, they couldn’t get food let alone materials, they had no tools to work with except for basic things like spades and hammers, and they worked in extremely difficult conditions — in the jungle with its heat and humidity.

“All of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment.”

WAR CRIMES
THE Death Railway caused the most war crime trials. After the war, an astonishing 111 Japanese officers and men were tried for war crimes on the railway with 32 of the guilty men being executed, three times the number sentenced to death at the Nuremberg trials.