Thailand: Australians, New Zealanders Remember World War II Victims Of Japanese Army In Thailand
2008-04-25 17:10
Australian Ambassador to Thailand Bill Patterson, right, places a wreath during the dawn ceremony to mark ANZAC Day at Hellfire Pass in Kanchanaburi province, western Thailand Fri, 25 Apr 2008.
(Photo courtesy: AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong)
Australian former WW II prisoner of war Bill Haskell, 88, makes his way on part of the death railway after the dawn ceremony to mark ANZAC Day at Hellfire Pass in Kanchanaburi province.
(Photo courtesy: AP Photo/Apichart Weerawong)
HELLFIRE PASS, THAILAND: Several hundred Australians and New Zealanders on Friday (25 Apr) mourned World War II prisoners of war who died by the thousands as they hacked through Thailand's jungles to build a railway under the guns of their Japanese army captors.
Six former Australian veterans of the war joined the group of some 400 at a dawn ceremony at Hellfire Pass, a stretch of the so-called "Death Railway" where conditions were particularly brutal.
The ceremony was held to mark Anzac Day, named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, which was launched to commemorate soldiers from the two countries who fought a bloody World War I battle against Turkish forces on the Gallipoli peninsula starting on 25 Apr 25, 1915.
Hellfire Pass was the most notorious stretch of the 415-kilometer (260-mile) railway that linked Thailand and neighboring Myanmar, then called Burma.
The name comes from a legend that a POW, watching the emaciated figures digging through rock at night by firelight, remarked that the scene resembled the jaws of hell.
The World War II Imperial Japanese Army forced about 60,000 Allied prisoners and 200,000 Asian laborers to work on the railway day and night with basic hand tools and dynamite.
More than 13,000 POWs and up to 80,000 Asian laborers died carving the route through mountains and malarial jungles. Most perished from disease, overwork or beatings by the Japanese.
Japan saw the rail line as crucial to its war campaign and tolerated no delays. The line was completed in little more than a year.
Kanchanaburi province, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of Bangkok, draws many tourists and survivors to World War II sites, including two cemeteries where the victims of the railway effort are buried.
(By APICHART WEERAWONG/ AP)
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