Hellfire Pass

Kanchanaburi War Cemetery

The meticulously maintained Kanchanaburi War Cemetery is in the centre of town.

: Entry to the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.

: Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.

: Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.

: Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.

: Commonwealth War Graves Commission information plaque at Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.

The Burma Thailand Railway

The 415 kilometre Burma-Thailand Railway was constructed rapidly by Allied PoWs and local forced labour between late 1942 and late 1943. It was built to supply Japanese troops in Burma, allowing vulnerable sea routes to be bypassed.

Hellfire Pass is 80 kilometres to the north-west of Kanchanaburi on Saeng Chuto Road – the road to Sangklaburi near the Myanmar border.

The Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre and Memorial Walking Trail is located just above Hellfire Pass (Konyu Cutting). It was built by and is maintained by the people of Australia. In 2018 it was refurbished and, in the process, many of the diaromas, photographs and information boards were removed or sanitised.

Fortunately, the museums in Kanchanaburi are honest enough to tell the real story.

: Hellfire Pass. Photograph from our Southern Thailand Road Trip in July 2022.

Naming of Hell fire Pass

To speed up the construction of the railway Japanese engineers demanded two 12 hour shifts This brutal initiative was termed ‘Speedo’. The main source of illumination to allow the work to continue at night was bamboo fires. The prevailing culture of the western PoWs at Konyu was Christian – wherein the vision of hell was the devil and the fires of hell. The night scene was one of the burning fires of skeletal men working as slaves in front of the devil (the Japanese). Hellfire!

Konyu Cutting was the deepest and longest rock cutting on the entire railway.

Speedo!

To speed up construction of the Konyu Cutting (Hellfire Pass) and the entire Thai-Burma Railway the Japanese introduced ‘Speedo’ in mid 1943.

During this brutal phase from July to October 1943 PoWs were forced to work around the clock, often up to 18 hours a day. The work continued day and night.

Exhausting labor, malnutrition, disease, and brutal treatment by guards resulted in devastating loss of life during the Speedo construction phase.

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