"the Asian story"

What is the "Burma-Siam Death Railway"? It is a half forgotten Japanese Military project to build a railway connecting Siam and Burma so that troops could be mobilised to attack British India at its eastern frontier. The use of Asians as slaves was mandated by the high command of the Imperial Army which naturally had a high toll in human life. The post-War British propaganda machinery sought to downplay this atrocity for which there is evidence to point to Winston Churchill's War Cabinet. It is inexplicable to me how far reaching an effect this had had, that even today this wholesale slaughter of people has no official designation. Hence, I call it the Burma-Siam Death Railway.

Thailand has found the artefacts left behind not a grim reminder of an atrocity but a sanitised happy tourist destination. Even so, you may go to Kanchanaburi and travel up to the border Chiang Rai and look at the remnants. And if you do, say a prayer for the Asians, especially the Indians of Malaya who perished there.

This wall and relief was set up for tourists ...

Below is a "changkul" or hoe that was found and kept at the Kanchanaburi Museum

The BSDR is not an official name in any official classification. In fact, the BSDR is not classified as an event for academic research at all such as the "Bataan Death March" or the "Rape of Nanking". As a result, BSDR is always presented as an issue in Japanese atrocities against POWs, or an issue in labour mobilization, or as an achievement in Japanese war-time ingenuity. 

We cannot blame them because the Asians who were victims of the BSDR never really took ownership of this tragedy. 

For long I mulled over how to present my material and was overwhelmed at how nuanced it can become. So I am giving a basic outline of the event called "Burma-Siam Death Railway" today and then let my readers speak up on the evidences I am going to place here, somewhat randomly. I am sorry this is not a history book style organized work. 

Between 1942-1943, the Japanese Imperial Army decided and built an estimated 415 kilometres of railway from Ban Pong in Thailand to Thanbyuzayat in Burma. Built over extremely hostile terrain and disease ridden tropical jungle it was a feat of engineering and architecture. But an accomplishment at an amazing cost to human life – 13,000 prisoners of war, and 100,000 conscripted labour from various Asian communities then resident in British Malaya - Malays, Javanese, Chinese, and especially Indians who had migrated to Malaya and Burma. 

The Japanese call this railway “taimen”, meaning the Great Railway. and celebrated their achievement by commemorating a monument and even issued a coinage. The PoWs and Japanese soldiers and their Korean guards have been numbered and named by the various warring nations of World War 2, but the “romusha” as the Japanese called the Asian slaves, have been largely relegated to a few reluctant footnotes in the history books.

So severely marginalized were the Asian slaves, that none of their nations which achieved independence thereafter from their colonial masters even bothered to conduct an official inquiry. Thanks to post-War Japanese diplomacy and the British and their Allied nations’ reluctance to share compensation with Asian survivors; not to mention the clever propaganda campaigns to make Britain look good after the war, nations like Indonesia and Malaysia even adopted a policy not to inquire at all.

Commendably, much has been written of the PoWs who carry the motto “lest we forget” but the souls of the Asian slaves – Indonesian Javanese and Sumatrans; Malayan Tamils, Malays and Chinese; and Burmese tribals will not rest in peace until there is a closure. The lost will not return and their wounds will not heal until the world hears their story.

This site is dedicated to the Asian slaves who died on the Burma Siam Death Railway.

"Burma-Siam Death Railway"

Politicians and their historians have a penchant to downplay terrible deeds by giving it harmless moniker such as "incident" or "skirmish." Take for example, what the Japanese did in Nanking. This is called "Incident" in many historical works but nearly 250,000 people died over a period of a month. That is why the more loaded word "Rape of Nanking" is often preferable. In similar veins, my friend David Boggett says that he estimated that building the railway from Ban-Pong to Thanbyuzat amounted to about the same number of death! I do not want to compare it with the naming of other atrocities committed by the Japanese such as the "Baatan Death March" or similar incidents where it was POWs alone who died.

Burma changed its name to Myanmar in 1989; and Siam changed its to Thailand in 1939 but to the folks who were victims of the Death Railway remember it as Burma and Siam. They would say they went to Burma through Siam. In transliteration: "barmAvuKu pOnOm, siAm valiyA"! "Death Railway" is also the epithet the Tamils in Malaya coined for themselves: "marana rayilvE". In any case, that is the way my old folks referred to this mass murder of innocents and I see it is actually fitting that it should be remembered this way.

Hence we call this Japanese great war accomplishment BURMA-SIAM DEATH RAILWAY.
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