School Trip: Hell Fire Pass

Ok back to my trip I took in October.... soon I will be done with these posts-

 just one more to go after this one! See other Thai Trip 2012 posts...

After the train ride we got back on our buses and headed to Hell Fire Pass Memorial. It got it's name during the "Speedo" time from April -August 1943 when they were working long hours to finish the railroad by the deadline in August. The POWs and Asian laborers, who were skinny from lack of food, etc, cut through rocks by hand late at night by firelight thus giving the name "Hell Fire Pass."

A former Australian POW went back and found the area and asked that the area be made into a 

historical site. So that is how the Hell Fire Pass Memorial come to be.

The whole railroad project (not just Hell Fire) by numbers:

about 12,400 died of the over 60,000 Australian, British, Dutch, and American POWs who worked on the railroad.

between 70,000 to 90,000 died of the 250,000 Asian laborers worked on the railroad.

The reasons for this terrible death total included; lack of good medical treatment, lack of good food, and harsh treatment by guards, etc. The heat must have also been terrible, they had to work the longest hours during one of the hottest time of  the year. The civilian laborers often had it even harder because they didn't have Army doctors to take care of them.

Some of the group

Walking through Hell Fire Pass...most of the railroad track was gone
  as they removed it to be used elsewhere

As you can see I rolled my pants up because it was so hot...can't imagine
what those POWs and civilians went through....

View from the top...that is a lot of rock to remove by hand and explosives

It was so hard to think about what went on during the war, but I am so glad that I was able to learn more about this time in Thailand's history.