BBC00056

1CD0013823; 1LP0059076

Building the Burma-Siam Railway

audio

1945-11

Foster, Frank (speaker, male)

The Japanese told us that our job was to build a section of a new railway from Siam to Burma. i especially remember one jap engineer in charge of the working party. his favorite way of getting his orders quickly carried out was to chuck down iron rivets his bars from his perch from the top the of the bridge on to the head of our officers and men who were working below. when the monsoon broke out with a 72 hour non stop downpour most of us prisoners were very nearly at our last gasp. the rains which immdetialy turned the embankment into quagmires drenched us day and night. and sent the death rates soaring. Almost at the same time cholera broke out and decimated the crowded camps.. You'd have thought that the Japanese in their own interest might have taken some steps to stem the ravages of the disease. but they didnt, instead they actually started a speedup.. we had to work in shifts of 14, 20 and 36 hours at a stretch. we were practically naked by now for the japanese issued hardly any clothing. weary and worn out we used to lurch back to our huts to eat the rice and slush called stew. but often nothing infact but a radish or bamboo root in boiling water. lapsed into exhausted slumber wet and jammed on top of each other in leaky windswept huts.

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00:01:23