The Bridge...

I rented a bicycle from my guesthouse yesterday. I rode to The Bridge Over The River Kwai. I couldn't help but start to whistle the "theme" song. There's a museum nearby. They had a video showing an interview with the former POW that started singing the song. It's an old British fight song. They had lyrics that insulted the Japanese, but the Japanese lacked the English vocabulary to realize it was an insult. The captors were amused every time the POWs would start to sing.

Over 100,000 people died building the railway from Thailand to Burma. The Japanese needed this railway to move supplies to Burma and stage an attack on India. The seas were not a safe option for the Japanese, so they had to build a railroad through the mountains. Most of the POWs that died were British, Australian, or Dutch. There are about 6,500 of them buried in a cemetery in Kanchanaburi.

The museum explained that had the Japanese provided proper food, water, and medical care, the death rate would not have been so high. So I found it odd that the Japanese were very respectful of deceased POWs. They allowed the POWs to hold funerals, and would sometimes attend. In 1944, the Japanese even built a monument to all those who died while building the railroad.

The POWs used this respect for the dead to their advantage. They would independently keep records of who died, and periodically would bury it with a POW. These records were then uncovered by the Allied Powers after the country was liberated. During liberation, most of the bodies were exhumed and placed in one of three cemeteries. The British Commonwealth still attends to these sites.