 Hellfire Pass, Kanchanaburi
Hellfire Pass is an infamous railway cutting built by prisoners-of-war on forced labor under the Japanese in Thailand. It is on the Death Railway in Kanchanaburi Province.
The Hellfire Pass got its name due to the sheer difficulty in cutting the section through the rocks for the tailway. This, the general remoteness of the place, the lack of proper tools, claimed many lives including Australian, British, Dutch and other Allied prisoners-of-wars as well as labourers from Malaya, all of whom suffered the same treatment under the Japanese.
The purpose of Hellfire Pass was to create a railway line from Thailand into Burma. No trains travel along that line today. Now tourists can travel as far as Nam Tok railway station, crossing the bridge over the River Kwai to Kanchanaburi, the nearest major town.
Hellfire Pass, Kanchanaburi, with memorials to those who perished
Author: Diliff (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 Generic)
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