Death Railway survivors revisit their painful past

The group of Death Railway survivors and their kin at the Myanmar border during a recent trip to retrace the railway line.

RETRACING his steps to working on the infamous Thai-Burma “Death Railway”, survivor V. Ponnampalam said nothing good came out of it.

 

Barely holding back his emotions, the 84-year-old said the railway track project only brought pain and suffering to the thousands of prisoners of war and civilians who were forced to build it between 1943 and 1945.

 

During World War II, the Japanese commissioned the 415km Thai-Burma Railway to transport supplies by land.

 

“More than 100,000 men died during the railway’s construction which comprised prisoners of war and Asian labourers.

Ponnampalam was eight years old when he and his father were take to work on the line.