August 15, 2014
During WWII, the Japanese wanted to build a railway from Burma to Bangkok so they could ship supplies all the way to Singapore. The Japanese, against the Geneva Accord, put POWs to work along with recruited labor into building bridges and cutting through mountains to complete the train. Many of the men died.
Hellfire pass earned its name because men were forced to work on it around the clock. During the night, the site of the starving men working under the glow of torches resembled a scene from hell.
The museum is quite nice and so is the walk down to the pass. It is hard to imagine that such tragedy happened in such a pretty setting. I also found myself wondering, why is it that when I learned about WWII it was all about Europe, Germany and then the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor? There was so much going over in the Pacific but I didn’t learn anything about that until I started to travel to that part of the world.
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