Infamous ‘Death Railway’ Reemerges in Thai Jungle

HELLFIRE PASS, Thailand — An hour’s drive from the infamous Bridge on the River Kwai, a lone man hacks through thick jungle to uncover the old rail line that World War II POWs built under pain of death.

Rod Beattie has spent two years carving through despairing terrain with machete and chain saw, part of a plan to honor thousands of Allied prisoners of war who died clearing the same ground a half-century ago.

“There are some people who think I’m crazy,” Beattie acknowledges. “But I don’t care what they think. I care what those men think.”

“Those men” are the 12,000 American, Australian, British, Dutch and other POWs who perished as slave laborers building the notorious “Death Railway” for their Japanese captors through steaming, disease-ridden jungle. Perhaps 100,000 conscripted Asians also died.

They died of starvation, disease, physical exhaustion or murder at the hands of guards whose brutality increased with pressure to finish the line.

The line supplied a Japanese army in Burma, snaking through 260 miles of hilly, virgin jungle cut by 60,000 POWs and 200,000 Asian laborers using primitive hand tools.

Uneconomical and unsafe, the railway was closed shortly after the war. The rails were sold for scrap. The rail bed disappeared under creeping ivy, bamboo and trees.

Beattie, 48, is bringing part of the line back to view with the hope more people can see it and remember what bitter survivors call a “forgotten war.”

The Australian army veteran and civil engineer has a special connection with the railway. He is superintendent of two Allied war cemeteries in the Thai town of Kanchanaburi, where most of the POW dead are buried.

Three trains a day still cross an iron bridge over the Kwai River in Kanchanaburi. The suffering of the POWs who built it was immortalized in the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Some 1 million tourists a year visit the bridge.

“To most people, the Bridge on the River Kwai is the Death Railway,” Beattie says. “But it was actually the easy part. There was no jungle to cut through. The POWs were next to town and could bathe and cool off. Cholera didn’t cut through them.”

In 1994, Beattie started attacking the overgrown rail route himself. The idea was to give visiting Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating a view of a remote spot--Hellfire Pass.

The sheer-sided, man-made gorge, perhaps 150 yards long, is notorious for brutality even by Death Railway standards. An estimated 400 prisoners died there, including 69 killed by guards. Some were clubbed to death with crowbars.

Rusting tools remain embedded in the rock where, at the deepest point, POWs cut 260 feet straight down using hand drills and sledgehammers.

The prisoners worked nearly naked in loincloths, vulnerable to sun and mosquitoes. They worked up to 18 hours a day, rewarded by a single bowl of rice. The sick went untreated. Those who faltered or showed sign of rebellion were tortured or killed.

The name Hellfire Pass comes from a legend that a POW, looking over the deathly figures digging through rock at night by firelight, remarked that the scene resembled the Jaws of Hell.

Beattie cleared enough for Keating to leave impressed.

Then, surprising himself, Beattie kept going. So far, he’s cleared five miles of rail bed.

“What motivated me was the memory of those men,” Beattie says. “The veterans feel this part of the war was forgotten. By opening up the line so people can actually see it, I can help more people remember.”

Three days a week, Beattie loads a chain saw, machete and climbing gear into his pickup and drives to Hellfire Pass. Wrecked rail cars still mark part of the way.

Then, helped only by his Vietnamese-born wife, Thuy, he plunges into the bush, hacking and clearing a half-century’s growth. He often discovers fragments of the bombs Allied planes dropped to crater the track.

At times, he has spent 11 hours clearing a mere 10 yards. At the gorge itself, he dangled from ropes down the sides to saw out saplings.

“I feel I have a fair understanding of what they suffered,” Beattie says. “I worked right through the night on Hellfire Pass one night. You can almost feel the men. They’re there.”

A year ago, the Australian government allocated $1.3 million for a memorial project comprising a small museum and three miles of cleared track so more people can visit the area and remember the POWs’ sacrifice.

Beattie had already cleared three miles on his own. So, he again kept going--cutting two more miles so far. He figures he’ll stop at about seven miles total.

The work went largely unremarked until recently, when Beattie received a moral boost from a visit to the Allied cemeteries by Prince Philip of Britain. Beattie explained the Hellfire Pass memorial project and the prince voiced support.

Surviving family members have expressed amazement at someone dedicated to repeating labors that, under different conditions, killed their loved ones.

“I’d be completely against any attempt to run the train again or commercialize it,” says George Bloomington, 72, of London, whose only brother died on the line. “But if they keep it natural and dignified and help people remember, I’m all for it.”