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Map of the Death Railway. A railway route between Burma and Thailand, crossing Three Pagodas Pass and following the valley of the Khwae Noi river in Thailand, had been surveyed by the British government of Burma as early as 1885, but the proposed course of the line – through hilly jungle terrain divided by many rivers – was considered too difficult to undertake.
As a first step, Japan planned to lay the Siam – Burma railway line connecting Siam(i.e., Thailand) and Myanmar. The Siam–Burma railway did not traverse benign terrain. It snaked through dark, deep valleys, climbed high mountain ranges and lengthy mountain passes, crossed great rivers and inhospitable rain forests.
This was part of a project to link existing Thai and Burmese railway lines to create a route from Bangkok to Rangoon to support the Japanese occupation of Burma. About a hundred thousand conscripted Asian labourers and 12,000 prisoners of war died on the whole project, which was nicknamed the Death Railway .
Thanbyuzayat is considered the terminus of the Death Railway, and is where it connected with the Burmese main line (Burma-Siam Railway). [1] The cemetery was formally inaugurated on 10 December 1946 by General Aung San and Governor Sir Hubert Rance. [2] It is open every day between 07:00–17:00. [3]
The Kingdom of Siam, the country's name at that time, now known as Thailand.The first Siamese railway projects, which were discussed from the 1840s onwards, were aimed at linking the then British Burma to the Chinese market, which was to be run over Northern Siam for reasons of accessible terrain, a project that had been operating in various variations up to the 1880s, but never realized.
Thanbyuzayat was also the site of a Japanese prisoner of war camp for the prisoners who worked on building the railway, [5] The first prisoners arrived in June 1942. 13,000 prisoners passed through the camp of which at least 6,000 were Australian and 4,300 Dutch prisoners of war. From Thanbyuzayat, the prisoners were moved to work camps on the ...
He spent 3 years and 8 months as a Japanese Prisoner of War, [2] the majority of this on the infamous "railway of death" in Thailand. Saved from virtually certain death by the timely dropping of the Atom Bomb on Japan , which led to the almost immediate unconditional surrender of the Japanese .
Malaysian Tamils during the construction of Death railway between June 1942 to October 1943. Main article: Burma Railway During the Second World War, the Japanese army used more than 120,000 Tamils in the construction of a 415km railway between Siam and Burma to transport army supplies.