THAILAND-BURMA RAILWAY CENTRE AND DON RAK WAR CEMETRY

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

 

 

The Thailand-Burma Railway Centre in Kanchanaburi is an interactive museum, as well as aresearch and information Centre dedicated to presenting the story ofthe Thailand-Burma Railway, which ran from Nong Pladuk in Thailandto Thanbuyuzayat in Burma and was built by the Imperial JapaneseArmy during WW II. The museum consists of eight galleries featuring:an introduction in view of a timeline; the different phases of planning; construction and logistics; a geography of the railway; the living conditions in the camps; medical aspects; a summary of the deaths; the end of the war; and what happened after the war. Themuseum has video and slide show displays and sixty panels describingthe history of the  Death Railway from its inception to the final scene of theline in 1947, in both Thai and English. The text is supported by artwork, (electronic) maps, scale models, a diorama, graphics, actual war time photographs and plans. The museum is situated just beside the Don Rak (ดอนรัก) war cemetery, on which it offers a panoramic view from its coffee shop. The name of the cemetery translates ‘Highland of Love’. On it 6,982 allied soldiers are buried, all victims from WW II, most who died during the construction of the infamous Death Railway from Thailand to  Burma.Unlike mass graves in which soldiers were in the past sometimes dumped, each soldier, whether a general or a private, has his own named grave, whilst the tombstones of unknown victims who fell are inscribed with the words Known Unto God, a text coined by the writer Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book, after he had pressed his only son Jack to join the army and whom died in action in WWI while his body was never retrieved.