	Kanchanaburi Ayutthaya

Kanchanaburi

Bridge Over the River Kwai

Two hours northwest of Bangkok is the province of Kanchanaburi and the site of the infamous Japanese death railway. During World War II, between 1942-45, the Japanese forced prisoners of war to build a 415 km railway from Bangkok to Myanmar (formerly Burma) through some of the toughest jungle infested regions in Asia. The Japanese used 16,000 Allied prisoners of war, mostly from Britain, Australia, U.S.A., the Netherlands and up to 100,000 Asian labourers to build the line. A great number of them died during the building of the track and the historic bridge know known as “The Bridge over the River Kwai”. Just before the end of the war, the allies bombed the bridge. After the end of the war in 1945, the British destroyed four kilometres of the track from the Burmese-Thai border. The remaining 300 kilometres in Thailand were sold to the State Railway Authority of Thailand in 1947. Today only 130 kilometres of the line is still in use, linking Bangkok with a small town further west of Kanchanaburi. This famous bridge is located about four kilometres northwest out of Kanchanaburi provincial town.

Along one section of the track is Hell Fire Pass and Hell Fire Pass memorial, where Australian and allied POWs were forced to dig a gorge through solid rock, by bare hands and basic tools where significant amounts of Australians died. Such is the significance, Australian Prime Minister John Howard even visited here in 2002, and Sir “Weary” Dunlop had his ashes interred here, a testimony to the immense significance and an eerie reminder of Australian spirit in the face of immense adversity.

The Jeath War Museum: The JEATH War Museum comprises another reminder of the wartime past. The enclave, in the riverside precincts of Wat Chaichumphon, has been constructed in the form of an Allied POW camp. The name JEATH is derived from countries inextricably associated with the years 1942 through 1945, namely Japan, England, America, Australia, Thailand and Holland. The thatched detention hut with cramped, elevated bamboo bunks, contains photographic, pictorial and physical memorabilia dating from the Second World War. It is believed that one out of every five people who laboured on the railway perished during its construction. POWs who survived the ordeal have donated items from that period to substantiate the museums authenticity.