On Earth, there is a railway called the Death Railway, also known as the most "terrifying" railway on earth, which is made of 100,000 lives and 38 pairs of white bones under each rail. This is the Thailand-Myanmar Railway.
Background of the construction of the Thai-Myanmar Railway
The Thai-Burma Railway, which was built by Japan during World War II, was built by Japan as a land supply route from Thailand to Burma, and in early 1942, the Japanese army invaded Burma and gained actual control of the British colony.
However, if it was necessary to resupply the army in western Burma, because it was difficult to pass by land, the Japanese army had to take the sea route, bypass the Malay Peninsula, pass through the Strait of Malacca, and enter the Andaman Sea before it could reach western Burma.
With the outbreak of the Pacific War of World War II, the Sea Passage of the Japanese Army in the Western Pacific region became more and more dangerous, and American submarines often attacked Japanese ships in the Western Pacific, so in order to avoid sea risks and shorten the time for replenishment, the Japanese army decided to build a railway connecting Bangkok, Thailand and Yangon, Myanmar, from which the Thai-Burma Railway came.
At that time, Japan could only muster 10,000 soldiers to build this railway of about 415 kilometers long, and the railway had to cross the Pass of the Derindayi Mountains on the Border between Burma and Thailand , the Santa Pass and the valley of the Mekong River, which were very difficult to build. As early as 1885, the British had surveyed the route of this railway, but because the construction was too difficult, the British gave up.
So if 10,000 soldiers came to build, according to the speed, it would take more than ten years, and for this reason, japan thought of using prisoners of war and labor to build the railway.
The Thai-Burma Railway: A Hell paved with white bones
The Japanese army recruited more than 60,000 Allied prisoners of war and about 300,000 Southeast Asian laborers that year. The railway line is divided into three sections, which are simultaneously constructed from both sides of Thailand and Myanmar. Prisoners of war and laborers in Singapore were transported to Thailand by train: 30 prisoners of war were generally crammed into an 8-meter-long freight car, no one could lie down to sleep for 4 days, sometimes even 40 hours without a meal; the treatment of laborers was even worse, often seventy or eighty people crammed into a cage-like carriage, many of whom had already choked on their breath before they reached their destination. Prisoners of war and laborers in Places such as Java and Malaya traveled by water to Thailand or Burma, and the narrow cabin they rode in was called the "Ship of Hell", which was full of partitions, and the height between each floor was less than 1 meter, and they could not even stand up straight, and the sea bumps and allied accidental bombing caused many deaths at sea.
However, when they arrived at the railway construction site, it was better to live than to die, from the day the Construction of the Thai-Burma Railway began, the Japanese army forced them to work fifteen or six hours a day, without a day of rest throughout the year, they did not have any machine help, and the only tools they could use were shovels, shovels and hammers. Rails and sleepers were carried by prisoners of war and laborers, who worked 20 hours a day, beyond the limits of human physical capacity.
Even more impressive is the "Hellfire Passage" hidden deep among the peaks and peaks. The railway, built by Australian and British prisoners of war, although only 600 meters long, was the most difficult section of the "Death Railway" construction process. The valley through which the railway passed was carved by Allied prisoners of war with shovels and hammers, combined with gunpowder blasting, and was divided into 8 meters and 25 meters deep. In order to catch up with the deadline, Allied prisoners of war and Asian laborers were forced to work day and night. At nightfall, the prisoners of war use torches and oil lamps to open the mountain and split the stones, and the dim fire and the shadows flicker and intertwine, as if the ghosts of hell, which is the origin of the "hellfire".
The Thai-Burmese railway passes through a deserted mountainous area with a hot and miasma. The Japanese army used bayonets to force prisoners of war and laborers to work day and night, as long as they did not comply, they would be beaten with sticks, and sometimes they beat and mistreated prisoners of war for no reason, enduring inhuman abuse, but there was no supply of food and drinking water, in order to fill their stomachs, they even ate weed the weeds on the side of the road, and when they caught rats, they ate them alive, and the meat and bones left over from the Japanese soldiers were all delicious dishes. As a result, various infectious diseases (such as cholera, malaria and dysentery) have emerged at the site. A large number of prisoners of war and laborers died at construction sites and roadsides. A whole construction site was strewn across the field, and it was unbearable to see.
Heat, monsoons, torrential rains, mosquito-infested diseases combined with intense labor and merciless corporal punishment devoured almost all the POW laborers who built the railway, according to statistics, the mortality rate of German prisoner of war prisons was 1%, the mortality rate of Japanese prisoner of war prisons was 40%, and the death rate of Japanese prisons on the Thai-Burma Railway was as high as 90%.
About 16,000 Allied prisoners of war and 90,000 Southeast Asian laborers gave their lives to build the railroad. It can be said that there are 38 pairs of white bones under each rail, and the name of the death railway comes from this, because there are too many dead people, the Japanese army directly saves a truck of dead people /patients, drags them to the cliffs and ravines next to the construction site and falls inside.
After completion, most of the prisoners of war were transferred to the Japanese mainland, and these survivors not only lived badly, but also suffered from time to time Allied air raids.
This "death railway", together with the Nanjing Massacre and the Bataan Death March, is known as the three major atrocities committed by the Japanese army in the Far East during World War II. After the victory of the war, the Allies exhumed a large number of corpses on both sides of the railway.
summary
Today's Thailand-Myanmar Railway, the walking path opened up along the "Death Railway", silently tells the world about the tragic memory that cannot be looked back. Of course, this history, which is remembered by all, has been erased from the history of Japan.
Backwardness means to be beaten, we must not forget history, remembering is not to promote hatred, only by remembering history can we not forget the road we came, can we understand that everything is not easy to come by now, remembering history is also to inspire us, do not move forward, and constantly work hard for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, only when the Chinese nation stands on the top of the East, we will not experience such a tragedy.
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