### The Death Railway Built Under Japanese Bayonets
During the Second World War, after the Japanese invading army captured Rangoon, it forcibly conscripted 400,000 laborers to build a railway from Siam—now called Thailand—to Burma.
Because the terrain was complex, working conditions were terrible, and the labor was extremely intense, great numbers of laborers died. According to page 591 of *A Complete Record of the Twentieth Century*, published by Taiwan’s Jinxiu Cultural Publishing House, the laborers “sacrificed the lives of 260,000 people.” The figure is horrifying. For this reason, the railway became known as the “Death Railway.”
Construction of the railway began in June 1942 and was completed in October 1943. More than sixty years have passed since then. Exactly how many laborers were forcibly conscripted to build it? How many died? From the materials available, the figures for the number of laborers conscripted do not differ greatly. But because the Japanese Army concealed the deaths, the figures for those who died vary considerably. Among these laborers, Allied prisoners of war were the first choice—servicemen from China, the United States, Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, and other countries. Technical personnel were also selected from among the Allied prisoners.
*War History of the Chinese Expeditionary Force* states that, in order to build the Siam–Burma Railway, the Japanese occupation forces forcibly conscripted 84,738 laborers in Burma and 46,000 American and British Allied prisoners of war. In addition, there were 269,948 Malay, Thai, and Chinese laborers.
*Past Events of the Second World War: A Great Chronicle of Grievances and Gratitudes · A Great Revelation of Inside Stories* gives the figures as 75,000 laborers and 46,000 prisoners of war. *Romance of the Republic of China*, published in Taiwan, states that after China’s Eight Hundred Heroes were captured by the Japanese Army, some were dispersed to different places. Among them, some were separately imprisoned in Southeast Asia and in Siam, Burma, Vietnam, and other places, where they were made slave laborers building railways. What later became of them, whether they lived or died, was unknown.
Judging from the records above, the total number of laborers should have been around 400,000.
As for the number who died, there is no way to calculate it exactly. *War History of the Chinese Expeditionary Force* records: “The railway laborers and prisoners of war were still forced to work amid hunger and disease, eventually leading to the tragic event in which 40,000 people were brutalized to death. Many others who tried to escape were killed by the Japanese Army. In other words, an average of one hundred people died for every kilometer of railway, and one corpse lay buried for every ten meters of track.”
The figures published by the Japanese Army for the deaths of railway laborers and prisoners of war were greatly reduced. There was no way to count the laborers who fled and were killed, starved to death, or died of illness. Near the bridge over the River Kwai on the Siam–Burma Railway are two Allied cemeteries. At one, stone tablets bear 6,982 names. The other was originally a prison and holds 1,750 sets of remains. At the former, the names, ages, and military unit numbers are recorded.
The Japanese Army forced the laborers to build the railway without regard for whether they lived or died. From this one can see how important the Siam–Burma Railway was to the Japanese Army. In March 1942, the Japanese invading army captured Rangoon—in fact, the British Army fled without firing a single shot—and urgently needed supplies for its forces.
But in the Battle of Midway that June, the Japanese Navy suffered a major defeat and gradually lost command of the sea in the Pacific. Previously, military supplies had mainly been transported by sea. Now, under threat of attack from the American and British air forces and navies, the supply of materiel to the Burma theater was greatly affected. Although supplies could be transported overland along mountain trails at the Yunnan–Burma border, only about 10 to 15 tons could be carried each day. The Japanese Army therefore urgently needed to open a new supply line.
The railway was 415 kilometers long. In the east, it began at Nantou in Siam; in the west, it reached Danbiao in Burma. Of this, 111 kilometers were newly built within Burma, 174 kilometers were within Siam, and 130 kilometers already existed. The railway held a position of decisive importance in Japan’s plan to dominate Asia. The Japanese Army demanded that it be completed between June 1942 and October of the following year. The railway was therefore built simultaneously from both the Siamese and Burmese ends.
When the railway was built, the Japanese Army lacked modern railway machinery. There were no bulldozers, road rollers, or track-laying machines. Most of the work depended upon human labor.
For the rails, one track was removed from the 270-kilometer double-track railway between Rangoon and Toungoo. Even sections of railways in Java, Singapore, Malaya, and other places that were not needed for military purposes were dismantled and shipped away for concentrated use. The sleepers were made from local materials. The stone pile drivers used to tamp the roadbed were operated entirely by human power.
The railway passed through deep mountains and old forests, and the terrain was complex. One four-kilometer stretch was the most dangerous of all. Within it was a 500-meter tunnel that people called the “Hellfire Tunnel.”
Under the threat of Japanese overseers’ bayonets and whips, the laborers rushed to meet their quotas. They endured the miasma and malaria of the primeval forest, suffered the scorching heat and bitter cold of the wild mountains, and swallowed food of the very worst kind. Not only was their human dignity humiliated, but they still had to work when they were ill. Their weakened bodies carried heavy tools, and the number of deaths increased day by day.
The laborers conscripted in Burma included Burmese, Indians, and Chinese. Among the overseas Chinese in Rangoon was an organization of collaborators called the “Overseas Chinese Federation.” It specialized in deceiving overseas Chinese into signing up, giving the undertaking the fine-sounding name “Labor Corps.”
According to the disclosure of Burmese Chinese publisher Huang Chaoqing: “When the Corps set out, it assembled on Baichi Road and was addressed by a Japanese man—someone translated his words into a Min dialect. Each member was issued one pair of canvas shoes, one *li* shirt, one sarong, and one pair of coarse-cloth shorts.” (See *Selected Poems and Prose of Huang Chaoqing*.)
The first group of laborers numbered more than one thousand. Some unemployed overseas Chinese were also forced to join. Because the labor was so intense and the environment so terrible, some died of illness, some were beaten to death, and some were tortured to death. Most who went never returned.
Beginning with the second round of labor conscription, the numbers gradually declined. Altogether, eight groups were forcibly conscripted. Later, the Japanese Army simply began “press-ganging laborers.” Exactly how many overseas Chinese laborers were there? To this day, there is no definite figure. It is estimated that there must have been six or seven thousand Burmese Chinese laborers.
As for how many Chinese laborers died, there is even less way to calculate it.
One surviving Burmese Chinese laborer who had performed forced labor on the “Death Railway” was named Li Yurong. He was nineteen that year and went together with five or six companions. At first he laid sleepers. After a month, he was moved to another place, where he still carried timber and transported rails. They got up at five every morning to work and did not stop until five in the evening. If laborers were injured while working, no one took care of them. If they contracted malaria, no one gave them treatment, and they soon died. Later, he and several companions discussed escaping and succeeded in making their way back to Rangoon. Li Yurong once wrote a poem recalling those years of building the railway, “Remembering the ‘Death Railway’”:
> In those days when the Japanese invaders ran rampant,
> Conscripted to the borderlands, we suffered torment;
> In miasmic mountain forests, there was much rain and damp,
> Across cold open country came wind and storm.
> To whom could we tell our bitter suffering?
> Sick and groaning, what could we do?
> Fortunate to have this life left, I sigh when I remember;
> I cannot bear to look back—my tears pour down.
At the San Francisco Peace Conference with Japan, Burma asked for only 200 million U.S. dollars in reparations. After the complaints of the local people were heard, the railway tracks within Burma were later dismantled. Though the rails were removed, the remains of the route can still be clearly seen. The blood-soaked facts must not be forgotten.
(Originally published in the U.S. *World Journal*, March 5–7, 2007.)