Working on Death Railway was 'horrific': Australian World War II POWs
To survivors of the Death Railway, the 415-kilometre stretch of railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma, was aptly named for the untold sufferings of many Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and labourers during World War II.
Japanese forces began construction of the railway in 1943 in a bid to support its Burma campaign. In the process, some 60,000 Allied POWs and more than 180,000 forced labourers were press-ganged to build the railway. By the end, as many as 16,000 POWs and 90,000 labourers had perished from tropical diseases, malnutrition and ill-treatment.
Keith Fowler, then a private in a machine gun battalion, was one of more than 13,000 Australians who were forced to work on the railway. Many of them passed through Changi Prison in Singapore while being transported to the work sites.
Speaking to Yahoo Singapore from Sydney, the 96-year-old Fowler said, “It was horrific, to put it plainly. We lost all semblance of being normal humans. Men died from starvation, beri beri, dysentry, cholera, you name it.” Prisoners were only given about 85 grams of rice daily, which was often treated with lime to get rid of weevils and tasted like “rotten eggs”, said Fowler.
In 1942, Fowler was captured in Java by the Japanese during their conquest of the Dutch East Indies, or modern-day Indonesia, and was held for three years. He recalled the “brutal bashings” dished out by the Korean guards, who were “worse than the Japanese”. On one occasion, Fowler was beaten for lighting a fire in the camp to cook rice. At the end of it, a Japanese sergeant pointed a rifle at his throat.
“And something in me said, just look him in the eye,” said Fowler, whose memory remains crystal clear more than 70 years on. “I had no intention of looking him in the eye (at first) because it would only have aggravated him more. But my eyes looked into his eyes…for what seemed a lifetime, he put the rifle down and walked on.”
Asked if anyone ever managed to escape the railway, Fowler replied, “Three British blokes tried to escape once. They (the Japanese) caught them and beheaded them.”
‘I reflect on it a lot’
Jack Thomas, 97, came from the same unit as Fowler and had served all over the Middle East before being sent to Java, where he was also captured. Like Fowler, he passed through Singapore briefly on his way to the Death Railway as part of a contingent of some 900 Australian POWs. He was later interned in Japan as well.
Speaking from Modbury, South Australia, where he had just met with family members of his old comrades, Thomas was in an introspective mood. He recalled being part of the Allied forces that defeated Vichy French forces in Syria in 1941, where he felt the same “exhilaration of victory” that the Japanese had in Singapore when the island fell.
“I was a young man, 19, 20 years of age, conceited, cocky. Had our roles been reversed, would I have felt any different from the Japanese soldiers?”
Asked how he managed to get through three and a half years of captivity, Thomas took a long pause and would only say, “A lot of people did not.”
Thomas vividly remembered sleeping in the mud and watching friends die through “hunger, work and cruelty” while working on the railway.
The veteran was later shipped to Ohama, opposite the Japanese port of Mori (now Moji-ku), on a “most hazardous journey” of 70 days. He worked in a coal mine that had little ventilation and was often flooded. The area was just 120 kilometres from Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb that precipitated the end of the war was dropped.
“They were not good times,” he said quietly.
After the war
Both Fowler and Thomas eventually made it home to Australia, where Fowler admitted to being a “nutcase” for several years. “I had no feelings at all when I was released. All these things I told you I had forgotten,” said Fowler. “It wasn’t until three years after I had come home and was married, I had my first child, that I got hit like a ton of bricks (by the memories).”
It was only with the help of psychotherapy that Fowler managed to recover. “I realised that all the anger I was putting on the Japanese, the only person it was affecting was myself.”
“I’m not sorry I was a POW. The experiences that I had have done me great stead, even though I had to go through all the trauma.”
Thomas is also grateful to have survived the war. “Time has dealt with me gracefully to reach the age of 97 after those few years of wartime experiences.”
In 2015, both men were invited to travel to Japan, where Thomas visited his former place of captivity. “I found the experience to be charming. I’m at peace with the Japanese. I hope they are at peace with me,” said Thomas.
Related stories:
