A railway made from death

I visited the Hellfire Pass Museum on the site of the longest and deepest excavation on the 415km railway built by the Japanese during WWII. The British surveyed a railway route in the early 20th century and decided it would be too difficult to complete. The railway was built in 16 months with 250,000 Asian laborers and 61,000 POWs – British, Australian and Dutch of which 16,000 died working on the railway. Approximately 90,000 Asian laborers also died but the Japanese did not count them.

The way the POWs were treated, reading the stories of survival and cruelty, once again I was disappointed how people can treat each other and it reminded me of negative comments, about the Japanese, from my Grandparents. Simple things like the Red Cross assistance packs were stored in a warehouse and not given to the POWs.