What is the Death Railway and why it has that name

People who ask what is the Death Railway are usually trying to place a name they have seen on a tour board or in a film. It is the Burma-Thailand Railway, a 415 km line that linked Non Pladuk, west of Bangkok, with Thanbyuzayat in Burma, now Myanmar.⁶ The Japanese built it to give their forces in Burma weapons, supplies and reinforcements.⁶

The workforce was drawn from prisoners and labourers. More than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war worked on it, and the Japanese enticed or coerced about 200,000 Asian labourers, the romusha.^2,3 The official name, the Burma-Thailand Railway, is neutral, while the nickname Death Railway sums up the toll that later sections set out.

The line was not built in a single place. The Thai and Burmese halves were laid at the same time, from Nong Pladuk in Thailand and from Thanbyuzayat in Burma.⁷ They met in October 1943.⁸ Today the railway is both a working line in Thailand and a memorial landscape, with cuttings, bridges, museums and cemeteries scattered along it.

Work began at Thanbyuzayat in Burma on 1 October 1942, and construction at the Thai end started almost at once at Banpong, which lies around 150 kilometres south-east of the pass.^11,30 Japanese engineers estimated 4 million cubic metres of earthworks, 3 million cubic metres of rock and 14 kilometres of bridges along the 415 kilometres of line.³¹

The scale was large, and it is worth keeping in mind when you see only a short stretch from a train window. The project included 688 bridges and more than 60 stations.¹⁹ The workforce laid an average of 890 metres of track every day.³² Hellfire Pass, for example, was drilled, blasted and cleared by hand, which is why cuttings feature so heavily in the story.²⁵

The railway was finished far faster than a pre-war survey had expected.¹⁶ The Anzac Portal gives both 15 months and 12 months on its pages, while the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre says actual construction took 16 months.^16,33,8 The figures are shown as the sources give them. All agree the line was complete in October 1943, and the Government gives the date as 16 October 1943.¹

Why is it called the Death Railway? Because of the people who died building it. The Hellfire Pass site lists 12,000 Allied prisoners and 90,000 romusha who died during construction.¹⁷ The Anzac Portal puts it as one in 5 Allied prisoners and almost half the romusha, and notes that of about 13,000 Australians who worked on the line, 2,700 did not return.⁴

Other official figures differ. The Tourism Authority of Thailand puts the toll at nearly 16,000 prisoners of war and possibly as many as 100,000 Asian labourers.¹⁸ The Thailand-Burma Railway Centre says some 240,000 is the most reliable estimate of the number of Asian labourers who worked on the line.⁴⁴ The chart below sets the death counts side by side, and the gaps are real: no single count has been agreed.

Survivors had their own measure of the cost. Survivors' rule of thumb was a death for each sleeper.²⁹ The Centre dates the worst months, called speedo, from March to September 1943 and says that is when most deaths occurred.⁴⁵ Read the numbers as estimates that point to the same fact, the scale of the loss.

Is the Death Railway still in use? Partly. By 1947 the Allies decided to tear up the Burma side and sell the Thai part to the Thai Government for GBP 1.5 million.²¹ In 1957 Thailand reopened a 130 km section between Nong Pladuk and Nam Tok, with a feeder line to Sai Yok Noi waterfall, and that section still serves the local community.⁵

Only about one-quarter of the railway, in Thailand, was ever reopened, which is why the stretch that runs today feels short against the full 415 km.^49,1 Beyond Nam Tok much of the route is invisible, lost beneath farmland and jungle.²³ A large portion between Tha Khanun and Sonkurai has been under the Vachiralongkorn Dam since 1985.²⁰ It is unlikely that the full railway will ever be restored.²⁴

Visitors can ride the part that survives. Tourists favour the stretch that starts at the River Kwai bridge and ends at Nam Tok, which goes through the 2 Chungkai cuttings and over the Wampo viaduct.²² The Wampo viaduct on that section was cut into a cliff by prisoners and heavily repaired after the war.⁵⁰ The tourist train deserves its own guide, and the practical details, from tickets to which side to sit on, are covered on the train page of this site.