A standard adage is that the winners write the history. That pre-supposes that those winners are literate. Even following World War II that was not always the case. I am referring specifically to those known as the romusha who labored to build the Thai-Burma Railway (TBR) in 1942-43. It is clear that collectively the romusha out numbered the Allied POWs by 3 or 4 to one. We can reasonably state that there were 58,000 Allied POWs[1] who worked on the TBR.
By comparison, there is little hard data as to how many Asians were conscripted. Those numbers are often discussed as ranges. Most numerous were 90-180,000 Burmese[2]. Next were the Malay-Tamils. Their totals depend on what projects one counts. In addition to the TBR, Tamils worked the Kra Isthmus Railway and the Mergui Road. It is estimated that there were 225-250,000 Tamils involved, 75,000+ of whom worked the TBR.
Three other groups were present in much smaller numbers: 5-7,000 ethnic Chinese were deported from Singapore or Malaya as punishment for being British sympathizers. 7,500 to 10,000 Javanese civilians were also imported to Thailand to work the TBR. When the IJA arrived at Kanchanaburi, they found a thriving community of Vietnamese (aka Animese) and recruited a few hundred young men – perhaps as many as 200.
The first Asian workers were actually Thai. They would technically fall under the heading of romusha, but the conditions under which they were recruited and worked were so vastly different that the term hardly seems to apply. They are known to have built the first 50 kilometers of the TBR from NongPlaDuk to Kanchanaburi in about 6 weeks. This section was completed in NOV 42. It is thought that between 10 and 15,000 Chinese-Thais were provided as contract workers by the Chinese merchant community in Bangkok. Speculation is that they were attempting to curry favor with their new ‘masters’ in hopes of landing contracts for goods and services that the IJA would need. In December, what became known as the BanPong Incident, resulted in the Thai government ceasing to officially participate in the Railway project.
Summing the participation of the three projects, there may have been as many as 500,000 total Asian workers; about half of whom worked the Railway. The Kra Isthmus project was the first and the least well documented. The number of Malay-Tamils who worked it and what happened to them upon completion is not well understood.
The Thai-Burma Railway (TBR) was by far the largest and longest of the three projects. The Burmese romusha worked almost exclusively within Burma itself. This is true even though only 110 Kms of the 415 Km Railway was in Burma. The vast majority of the romusha and POWs[3] alike worked in Thailand.
While the Burmese romusha worked throughout the Burma Sector in 1942 and 43, it is generally believed that most of the romusha in Thailand arrived no earlier than APR 43. By then, the first 125 Kms of the Railway were completed up to the Tarsao camp. This was accomplished largely by British POWs. The first place that we have photographic proof[4] of romusha working alongside Allied POWs is at the Kunyo Cutting (aka HellFire Pass) at kilo 150. There may well have been some romusha workers before that point but not likely before Tarsao. This would indicate that the majority of the Tamil and Javanese romusha worked on the upper half of the TBR from Kilo 150 to 300. This would coincide with an arrival at their work camps after March 43. This would also place them in the camps closest to the Thai-Burma border that suffered the most from the cholera outbreak of May-June 43. Given the devastating effect that that outbreak had on the Allied F Force and even though thousands of romusha perished as well, it is likely that it was the romusha work gangs that performed most of the work[5] in the latter weeks of construction in Sep-Oct 43.
Upon completion of construction in mid-Oct 43, some POWs were rapidly consolidated to the Kanchanaburi area where plans were afoot to process the healthiest among them for transport to Japan. This was as much a decision to reduce the population who required care and feeding as it was to provide needed workers in the home islands. It is well documented that over 10,000 POWs died while building the Railway and an additional 2,200 died enroute to Japan. Surprisingly, few who made it to Japan died there.
The Burmese workers simply melted back into the jungles to find their way home. Many of the romusha in Thailand remained in the jungle camps well into 1944. Many were assigned to cut wood for fuel for the trains now moving regularly between Bangkok and Rangoon. The last of the POWs arrived in Kanchanaburi in May 44, likely followed by the bulk of the romusha.
As the POWs arrived, they were sorted into one of three categories: the ill, debilitated and lame were hospitalized; the fittest were sent for processing for forward movement. Others were consolidated to camps across the area. Seemingly, there were no such benefits for the romusha. Surely, they likely had access to better rations and cleaner housing, but in KAN as in the jungle they were largely left to fend for themselves.
In mid-1945, hundreds of POWs, who had been recently discharged from the hospital at Nakorn Pathom, were sent south to work the Mergui Road. About 250 of them died there, along with thousands more romusha[6]. The Mergui Road was only one of a series of new camps that TBR veterans were moved to. Two airfields were under construction, one in Ubon, the other in Petchburi. A series of new camps were also the destination of other groups. The shipment to Japan had ceased, some POWs had ended their journey prematurely in Saigon.
But the romusha were seemingly forgotten, left on their own in Kanchanaburi. Both groups benefited from the improved rations and the lack of forced labor. In addition, thousands of POWS owned their lives to the true hospital that was opened in Nakorn Pahom in May 44. The romusha received no such relief. They were afforded access to ‘hospitals’ in the KAN area that were little more than death houses. Even with the improved diet, the diseases that afflicted them in the jungles continued to kill them. This is attested to by the 10,000 or so sets of remains that were unearthed near one of those facilities in the early 1950s. For whatever reasons, there is no record that any romusha were dispersed to other places.
Within weeks of the war’s end, the POWs were enroute home. Almost all were either there or en route by year’s end. Not so the romusha. Again, records are absent to determine who precisely took over the care and feeding of these thousands of people. Almost all of them were British subjects if not technically British citizens. London may have contracted with the Thai authorities to ensure that they were fed, but no one was looking at getting them home. Those that left in late 1945 and 46 did so on their own.
Harkening back to the fact that these people were largely illiterate and certainly disorganized, there is no record of how many perished trying to make their way south. For the same reasons, few survivors ever penned their memoires and those that did wrote in Tamil, Malay or Chinese and found a miniscule audience.
Because of the political disarray in both Europe and the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch and Javanese civilians languished in Kanchanaburi until 1947. There are no records, but many Tamils likely did as well. Some decided to stay and married into the local population. Others continued to die there.
Because military officers compulsively kept accurate records, we know the names, dates, places and causes of death of the vast majority of the POW dead. Whether they died in the jungle camps or after reaching KAN, the romusha were never adequately accounted for. Across the entire project, the death toll among the POWs was between 20 and. 25%. Among the romusha, that figure is estimated to be closer to 40%. Because of their sheer numbers and the places they are known to have worked, the Malay-Tamils bore the brunt of those deaths.
We will never know their names.
We will never know how many nor exactly where they came from.
We can, however, try to tell their story so that they will never be forgotten.
[1] These are the generally accepted and widely used numbers generated by Rod Beattie of the Thai-Burma Railway Center.
[2] This range is so wide in that it is widely held that desertions were rampant. 180,000 may have been ‘recruited’ but only 90,000 ever worked the Railway at any given time.
[3] It is thought that only about 20% (<12000) of the POWs worked in Burma.
[4] Thanks to photos taken by the IJA Engineers. In his book BAMBOO DOCTOR, SS Pavilaird notes that there were 3000 AFL at the Tonchan South camp (Km 131) some 20 kilos before Kunyo.
[5] They were assisted by some POWs and possibly Burmese romusha who crossed over from Burma.
[6] It is thought that as many as 100,000 new Tamils were imported for this project. Upon completion, the survivors were moved south to the city of ChumPhon.