Visiting 'Death Railway'
ABRAMS, ARNOLD
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI Visiting 'Death Railway' by arnold abrams Kanchanaburi, Thailand The bridge stands in a lonely place where the heat is oppressive and the terrain foreboding. Flowing...
...But it takes a visit to derive some sense of the horror that once abounded here...
...The plaza is enclosed by a barbed wire fence, a tribute to either the exquisite sense of irony or incredible insensi-tivity of some unknown official...
...The bridge site is silent, except for the fierce flies buzzing in the shimmering heat of the surrounding jungle...
...To compensate for the delay, the JapArnold Abrams regularly reports in these pages from Southeast Asia...
...Other reports have the bridge being demolished by aerial attack shortly after completion...
...According to official records, the bridge was bombed out of commission, but not totally destroyed, following the tenth attack by Allied airmen in 1945...
...Kanchanaburi is 75 long, dusty miles northwest to Bangkok's well-traveled tourist track, and the three-hour car trip on a narrow, truck-clogged road does not feature anything remotely resembling a Howard Johnson's or Holiday Inn...
...Brief written remarks are invited, but most signers forgo this ritual...
...Plans for the line were completed in June 1942 but construction did not begin until that October...
...it now operates an 80-mile stretch...
...After the Japanese repaired the bridge and tracks as part of their war indemnity, the State Railway of Thailand purchased the line from the Allies...
...Ignoring standard codes of warfare, Tokyo mustered more than 60,000 British, Dutch, Australian and American prisoners of war for the project...
...It stands about 50 yards from the bridge, surrounded by scrubby jungle foliage...
...The train line, once known as "Death Railway...
...All were victims of the Japanese "speedo" campaign, a frantic effort to create a vital overland supply route between Thailand and Burma...
...Particularly when it was not Japanese lives being sacrificed...
...They indicate, moreover, that many of the British prisoners were greatly distraught at having their craftsmanship destroyed...
...running across it are rusting railroad tracks that come from the brush, then curve toward distant mountains and the Burma border about 100 miles beyond...
...anese drove their labor force savagely...
...Most victims, judging from the tablets, died in the latter part of 1943, when the drive toward completion approached frenzy...
...This was an incongruous mixture of unlucky souls who happened to fall into Japanese hands...
...More than 116,000 men died and untold others were maimed while building the bridge and railway during World War II...
...Afterward, sitting in the shade with a beer on the bank of the River Kwai, there is a sense of guilt: What they wouldn't have given for such simple respite, yet here you are, bothered because the brew is warm and the bugs are annoying...
...Parts of its spans and tracks are pocked by bullet holes and shrapnel...
...The bridge once without a name has been immortalized by a worthy film and will be forever known as the Bridge on the River Kwai...
...asked Ganis Corke of Sydney, Australia...
...But most moving of all, perhaps, was a comment on the cemetery...
...Aware of the human cost, you are soon overcome by a curious impulse to trek slowly across the bridge, softly whistling the Colonel Bogey march—eerie-sounding in the stillness...
...Whichever, it holds a plaque with this inscription: "In order to console the Deceased who had been laboured along the Thai-Burma railway during World War II, this memorial was built by the Japanese Army in 1944...
...Several survivors' accounts dispute this...
...They were boys in their late teens, fathers in their early 30s and men in their mid-50s...
...A few, though, vent their feelings...
...Those were reserved for model compounds, which the Japanese often placed around major bases in hopes of protecting the bases...
...Remnants of the past remain on the bridge...
...The heroic, somewhat platitudinous phrasing obscures the simple truth and sadness of their story...
...is still in use, but no lonsier has a name...
...Some 3,000 tons of supplies were going to roll each day over these tracks, and no sacrifice was too great for this goal...
...While slowing the supply line, Allied attacks also killed or injured hundreds of prisoners and coolies, who were kept camped alongside the tracks...
...To that end, there is another memorial...
...It is a Japanese memorial built by the captors in 1944, when the tide of battle had turned and the world was taking note of how these people handled their prisoners...
...What can be said...
...A fine resting place for old friends," he wrote...
...Thanks to inadequate shelter, food and sanitation facilities, malaria, dysentery and cholera were rampant...
...The bulk of the work force, however, consisted of about 200,000 conscripted coolies, mostly hapless Burmese and Malayan peasants...
...Perhaps more consoling to the deceased, however, are the visitors who take the time and trouble to journey here...
...Rarely numbering more than several per day, the visitors sign a guest book at the cemetery...
...A memorial plaque at the cemetery entrance commemorates the "fortitude and sacrifice" of the "valiant company" within...
...Alles wiz wir machen ist falsch, gotterdarmarut" ("Everything we do is wrong, goddammit"), wrote William C. Deusch of Weymouth, Massachusetts...
...The movie, based on a novel by Pierre Boulle, ended with the bridge (and Alec Guinness) being blown sky high by agent-planted explosives...
...It is an ugly structure—200 yards of black iron span resting on yellow concrete foundations faded by weather and discolored by time—with an ugly history...
...Flowing below it is muddy water...
...The Japanese did not allow them to mark their sites with pow symbols...
...Real life, as usual, proved somewhat less definitive...
...This does not deter a crowded passenger train from slowly chugging across twice daily on a regularly scheduled run...
...Colleagues buried the Pows who perished, recording 16,000 fatalities...
...The project was completed late in 1943, but the railway was never put to full use because of frequent breakdowns...
...The absurdity of it all," Ralph Harvey of California wrote recently...
...Bad weather, shoddy material, sabotage and Allied air attacks were responsible...
...Nearby, in the sleepy provincial capital of Kan-chanaburi, is one of three cemeteries set aside in Thailand and Burma for victims of the Death Railway...
...The Japanese allotted only one year for the railroad's construction, although it stretched more than 250 miles, mostly through dense jungle...
...They set minimal manpower work quotas, and often rilled them by having sick men carted to work on stretchers...
...These facts are presented in colorless, objective tones in guide books and pamphlets published by Thai authorities and an international committee on the project's history...
...They had little in common except mutual misfortune: They suffered unspeakable agonies before succumbing...
...100,000 coolies dropped like flies and were left by the wayside unburied and unremem-bered...
...It was made by an Englishman who had been to the Bridge on the River Kwai before...
...The Japanese memorial is a 20-foot-high concrete pillar in the middle of a concrete plaza...
...Kanchanaburi Cemetery is unadorned but well-tended, with graves of approximately 7,000 pows aligned in orderly rows, marked by simple bronze tablets...
Vol. 53 • September 1970 • No. 18
