| Friday
19th March |
Very
relaxed nights sleep, at various times during the night & early
morning we could hear the monks chanting, not loud just quite peaceful.
Meeting at 7.30 this morning with all our gear & into the
songthaew to the Thong Pha Phum markets. |
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| Check
out the rails on the verandah, you may need to look at the larger
photo. The branches have not been cut off the outside, very unusual. |
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Time for a wander around & breakfast at the markets. Had a cup
of Cha with Damien, then onto a bus for 1 hr. transferred to a songthaew
to go to Hellfire Pass. |
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out the scaffolding at the museum, amazing! |
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| Hellfire
Pass
The
Konyu Cutting (Hellfire Pass) was once part of the Death Railway
during World War II. It is a 73 m long and 25 m high rock cutting
done by hand from Australian and British POWs. They started in
April 1943 and finished the cutting 3 month later. Another cutting
was 450 m long and 8 m depth. The POWs were forced to work up
to 18 hours a day. At night the cuttings were lit by carbide lamps,
bamboo bonfires and torches filled with diesoline. The eerie light
and the shadows of the gaunt POWs playing on the cutting walls
suggested the name the site would later be given - Hellfire Pass.
A
few machines were available to help but the bulk of the work at
Hellfire was carried out by 3.5 kg hammer and tap men, using steel
drills and hammers. In July 1943 the cutting was completed. At
least 63 men were beaten to death during the construction of the
pass and many more died from starvation, dysentery and cholera.
More than 70 % of the POWs died while the construction of the
Death Railway. |
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Historical
background: 'Death Railway'
In
1943 thousands of Allied Prisoners of War (PoW) and Asian labourers
worked on the Death Railway under the imperial Japanese army in
order to construct part of the 415 km long Burma-Thailand railway.
Most of these men were Australians, Dutch and British and they
had been working steadily southwards from Thanbyuzayat (Burma)
to link with other PoW on the Thai side of the railway. This railway
was intended to move men and supplies to the Burmese front where
the Japanese were fighting the British. Japanese army engineers
selected the route which traversed deep valleys and hills. All
the heavy work was done manually either by hand or by elephant
as earth moving equipment was not available. The railway line
originally ran within 50 meters of the Three Pagodas Pass which
marks nowadays the border to Burma. However after the war the
entire railway was removed and sold as it was deemed unsafe and
politically undesirable. The prisoners lived in squalor with a
near starvation diet. They were subjected to captor brutality
and thus thousands perished. The men worked from dawn until after
dark and often had to trudge many kilometres through the jungle
to return to base camp where Allied doctors tended the injured
and diseased by many died. After the war the dead were collectively
reburied in the War Cemeteries and will remain forever witness
to a brutal and tragic ordeal. |
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April
1989
relaid
by
Australian
C
Company
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