The Secret Asian Holocaust

In 1943 the Japanese forces wished to build a railway joining the existing railway lines in Thailand to those in Burma, to do this meant a whole railway network being built from Bangkok in Thailand to Rangoon in Burma.


As you can imagine this project was something huge and needed a lot of man power to create, something the Japanese could not afford as they were too busy using all man power for their war effort. The Japanese decided to use British and Australian prisoners of war and conscripted Asian labourers to create their vision.

British and Australian POW's

We know of the awful living conditions the British and Australian POW’s had to endure through historical documents and films like The Bridge on the River Kwai. These awful conditions involved working long hours moving soil day and night to create embankments and only living off rice, salt and water. During the project of building the railway twelve thousand British and Australian prisoners of war perished due to exhaustion, malnutrition and disease.

What we do not know and has been hidden for decades is the Asian holocaust of the Asian labourers the Japanese used.

Asian Labourers

While POW's were working on certain parts of the railway the Japanese had taken Asian labourers that used to work for the British before they were over run and put them in to working camps to build the railway. These Asian labourers were not just men but also women and children, in a lot of circumstances they were actually whole families working on the railway.

The Asian labourers worked hard in similar conditions to the British and Australian POW's and many perished due to the conditions they had to endure. Children died due to their small frames not being able to cope with the hard work they were forced to carry out, women passed on due to the exhaustion of working many hard hours carrying endless baskets of soil and men fell as they work due to the staggering effort that was put in to the railway.

Overall ninety thousand Asian labourers died during the building of the railway and the embankment and bridges that support it. Today only three of these 90,000 labourers have graves to mark their passing, and these are shown as unknown names. No one knows just where the ninety thousand bodies lay but it is known that mass graves lay not far from the embankments of the railway and that the British and Australian POW's were made to dig these mass graves to bury the Asian labourers.

A lot happened in the 2nd World War and while we know so much about the attrocities caused it is important to investigate and remember parts of history like this so these ninety thousand Asian labourers souls are not forgotten for what they had to endure.