Bridge on the Kwai - Gateway to a Lost Railway
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มี.ค. 2023
- In search of the lost Thailand to Burma railway engineer Bashar Altabba discovers its tragic history. Bashar travels to Thailand to examine the extraordinary engineering techniques adopted by the Japanese in the building of the famous Thailand to Burma railway. But it isn’t long before he discovers that engineering isn’t really what his journey is all about. When former Allied prisoners of war recall their experiences of working on the railroad, Bashar comes face to face with the dark side of this amazing engineering achievement.
At the height of World War II the Japanese decided to carve a railway through the mountainous jungles of Thailand and Burma. Like the pyramids of Egypt the railway would be a testament to imperial might, built with little else than the muscle power of 250,000 men. Dutch, Australian, British, and American prisoners of war were to be forced into slavery, with more than one in five of them worked to death. There were far more victims of the railway whose deaths were to be completely unrecorded. The Allies couldn’t prevent a human tragedy, but in the last year of the war the Americans unleashed a secret weapon on the railway, their first “smart” bomb. It was to prove a spectacular success, yet the story of the daring bombing raids has remained largely unrecognised. The most famous bridge on the railway, the bridge on the River Kwai, survives today, its place in history secured by a Hollywood movie. But other remnants have faded away into the jungle. For all its fame the Bridge on the Kwai is little more than a gateway to a lost railway - this is the story of its rediscovery.
When the imperial Japanese army overran the Malay Peninsula and Burma in 1942 it humiliated the old European colonial powers. But Japan’s advance had been so rapid that its front line in Burma was now dangerously stretched and vulnerable to counter attack. Resupply by sea was too slow and exposed to allied submarines. Japan’s only hope was to cut a railway through the virgin jungles of Thailand and Burma. It would be the most audacious engineering feat in World War II - but how would they do it?
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Me as a new generation Thai I would like to express my condolences to everyone of all nationalities who have suffered and suffered. You have worked hard. It is possible that we do not want another war. We should take care of each other. This world is bad enough.
There is a story from a Canadian family whose father enlisted in England and was in a British Artillery Battery. A Japanese guard (nick named San Fransico) ordered a group of mostly Australian
prisoners out of the hospital and used them for bayonet practice. After liberation he wished that he had not done that.
I couldn’t get through this documentary with listening to that elderly Japanese WW2 army veteran smiling and speaking so casually about his recollections of his experience as an IJA engineer building that rail line.
My uncle was a prisoner of war of the Japanese captured during fighting in the Philippines in 1942.
The memories of my late uncle’s brief references to the unbridled animalistic barbarism he and his fellow POWs endured at the hands of members of the Japanese Army prevented me from watching the video. Sorry, I wish it was not so….
@parrott849 My sincere condolences and respect to your uncle.
@@John-ih2bx Thank you
How sadistic became on a man in the end he will be humbled by karma itself , my sincere sympathy to those who parish during this darkest moment in mankind history .
To all the unnamed left behind (murdered/worked to death) building the now Bridge on the River Kwai and the rest of the RR.
@sharonwhiteley6510 My condolences and respect.
A timely reminder of why war is a sh1t idea. And why we should not allow our politicians to keep on creating them.
Great documentary on something that should never be forgotten.
True but our politicians are in the pocket of the arms manufacturers and have financial interests in making them as profitable as possible.
Love this docu , thanks
How do you mean love ?
Thank you for the video. Folks should never forget the atrocities done by the Japanese during WWII. Thank the Soviets for putting an end to the Pacific war by invading Manchuria; two maniacal powers that were fixated on power/territory (add Hitler and Mussolini/Italians in Europe). Thank the Allies, all of them, for putting an end to the fanaticism at the time.
the suffering of all the Men Women and Children on this railway build should never ever be forgotten. War is a son of a bitch and those who do not follow the rules during the engagement have mostly paid their price with their lives. those who still had to live with the thought of those they killed in that time frame in those conditions of all those people who paid with their lives building the whole stretch of the railway not just the bridge, the bridge was the target for the allies to take out. even though sections of the railway were bombed, purely by luck, mind you the actual target was the bridge. The thing that i must say is that was a very long time ago. things are very different now and those who are still alive of which there aren't many of them now on all sides of the wars are still reliving those moments today. those who are are reliving those moments because they were there some relive them because they were the cause of the deaths and they relive them out of guilt because at the end of the day they are human beings a thing that was forgotten during that time. War atrocities have been committed on all sides. I used to think that there were no rules of engagement or the treatment of prisoners of war. I was naïve, there are things that need to be in place for the prisoners of war. medical help is to be done, slave labour all these things were done to prisoners of war and this was definitely not provided for those who were prisoner during that time. War is never the right thing to do you have to learn to give and take be reasonable and let go of other things you may feel is important to you way of thinking to prevent way. When it comes to war there are two sides either you fight for what you believe in or you die. other countries are going to rally to the cause of what they think is right which basically means that both sides are going to go to their corners of the two factions that are fighting. This has been the case more recently with the Ukraine and Russia, and there are varying support for both sides on the matter. War is not a good idea, people die, innocent people die. if a country wants to take over your space your country you will fight tooth and nail to make sure your way of life doesn't change this is the same mind set back in previous wars, other countries have to learn that if a people say no to them coming in they have to accept that and leave it alone no matter what. just take it as they are not going to be happy if they are forced into submission and people will always stick up for their way of life. With todays economy it cost more money than any country has right now for there to be another war. I am sure we all have someone who was killed or was a prisoner during one war or another. we have to put our feelings aside and learn to forgive them but not to forget and down play your hatred or the cycle of war is going to start all over again forcing our children and grand children to live the horrors that is war there will only be a legacy lost to stupidity left. War is a cycle it happens every few years some wars are still continuing today. Wars have happened in my life time and my hubby was sent out on two of them one he did two tours. i do not know how i survived those times he was there, but you do what you can and keep the fires burning for when they come home again. Some came home in a metal box, some never came home at all, that was on both sides not just allies but on the other side too. If there is another world war the scariest scenario i can think of is no one is going to win wars are not games played on a computer or game console, they are real with real people dying by the thousands. wars need to be abolished for the sake of our growing families in the world we have worse things to worry about for most of us it is to put a roof over your head and food in your tummies for others it is the cost of living others it is where is my next pay check coming from. Please stop war. i will fight if i have to but i would rather keep talking to save a war from happening to save thousands of lives for every day that there is a war. I almost lost an uncle to a war, HMS Glamorgan, my uncle had just finished his shift and a missile hit the very place he had just left. My grand parents both served national services or draft for the war effort. I know first hand what it is like not knowing if you are going to see your husband again but you do what you can to survive while they are away from you and watch the news or wait for a message that he is ok. back during the world wars they didn't have that luxury they had to wait till they came home or a officer and a Chaplin came to your door giving you the worst news that could ever come. it sounds dramatic but it is reality for Military personnel and their families. think about this. is war your idea or are you fighting because you are told to by essentially fighting someone else's war your government. The bridge over the Kwai is just on story in thousands and wars have be raging for millions of years from inter tribal to world wars, skirmishes, campaigns and world domination by mad men. i will fight for my countries i have two, the UK and Canada but if i don't have to, i think it best we don't. to the families of those who fought and died or returned home my heart breaks for you all. i will fight for your cause because your cause is my own.
Tracy, I’m in agreement with almost everything you’ve pointed out in your heartfelt comment.
What I have to take exception to is to your single sweeping and somewhat dismissive sounding statement: “…atrocities were committed by all sides”
In an “arguable and very technical sense” that statement can be made.
But what that statement does is completely excuses and buries the reality of those years between 1937 and 1945 when the Imperial Japanese Army in their naked conquest and subsequent occupation and brutal subjugation of civilians living in countries in Eastern and Southeast Asian territories and the Pacific Ocean Islands and trivializes and dismisses the Imperial Japanese Army’s responsibility for the torture and murder of between an estimated 18 to 35 million innocent non-Japanese civilians of those occupied countries.
All Japanese soldiers instructed by their officers to personally carry out atrocities carried out by bayonet and sword; the “rape of the capital city of China,, Nanking is an example. An estimated 400,000 men, women; children, toddlers, newborns, fetuses; put to the bayonet and sword.
Farther north in other provinces an estimated a half million, 500,000 thousand innocent Chinese civilians murdered as a punishment just for the simple act of allowing the U.S. Army Air Force B-25 Doolittle squadron, that had just previously bombed Japanese mainland ports and munitions factories to crash land near the shores of China and not turning the flight crews immediately over to the Japanese military occupation forces. The reason; the single inconsequential attack caused the Commanding Officer of the Japanese Army Home Guard to “lose face”with his majesty the Emperor.
The torture and execution of allied prisoners of war; the list is nearly endless.
There is nothing that anyone can compare to anything the Japanese occupation forces needlessly did to non-Japanese people in that world war. Absolutely no military benefit reason, or operational or strategic purpose to engage in the butchery, slaughter and genocide they engaged in during their Imperial conquests.
I've swam in the river Kwai in the 90s, I swear to god you could taste blood in the water. I also travelled with weary Dunlops great niece
"The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic." - Joseph Stalin
"statistic" is the actual word, but your meaning is crystal clear, Wolf.
@@scottdecarrillo3082 oops, ya guess I should've proofread that one.
Wolf, I've done the same thing (just a few times!).
The metal curving bridge spans on the river kwai wasn't made by the Japanese nor was it build specificly for the railway there.
The bridge spans were made somewhere in the late 1900s or late 1910s by the Dutch for a railway line in East Java. When the Dutch East Indies finally fell under Japanese occupation, many of Java railways infrastructure were taken away by the Japanese to be used somewhere else.
This included hundreds of coaches, wagons, locomotives, a full branchline, and lots of unused former standard gauge railways. The bridge span on the river kwai was one of the assets the Japanese takes away from Java.
Something i would like to mention, Indonesia lost a certain type of 2-6-0 tender locomotives known as the C52s. The whole unit was regauged and reallocated to the Malayan peninsula and Indochina. Only a handful few were serviceable by the time the war ended, most were immediately scrapped. Thankfully one survived in Thailand.
Many of the rails used on the death railway were those taken by the Japanese from closedown branchlines and former javanese standard gauge railways.
The Javanese railway was once ahead of its time, until the Japanese swept in and turns everything into a big mess.
The British experimented with pigeons as a guidance system for a smart bomb. It worked too
Stop idioten maak je bekend
Donde puedo verla en español latino
A Japenese Albert Speer
The film and the script "Bridge on the River Kwai", is a complete load of bollocks.
It was a truly inaccurate summary of the horrors endured by POW's building the Burma Railway.
All POW's that I knew totally condemned the story, and regarded it as total fiction and an insult to their brutal captivity under the Japanese.
The bridge depicted in the film was one built adjacent to Songkurai camp that was situated on the banks of a swift flowing river, the Huai Ro Khi. 😠
I’m not sure I’d characterize it as a complete load of bollocks.
Considering the film was released in the late 1950’s under a fairly more stringent censorship policies regarding violence in cinema, it might be the studio made the conscious decision to dial down the depiction of the true brutality that did occur surrounding the events in the story. I mean, at the end of the day, the film company has to strive for commercial success too. If they produced a two hour film that showed the actual realistic horrors, well…, I may not even have been able to sit in the theater for the entire show myself.
Just playing devil’s advocate here. I agree with you, but no main stream movie can or will ever truly place people into the same awful stinking hell that those men and women lived through.
@@parrot849 My father was one of them, but your point is accepted. 😕
Ok but it is just a film. In fact the first real film I went to see at the age of 13 . From that day on I knew more about the bridge than most as I read every book available. I visit hell fire pass quite often as I live about 50 km away.
As far as I am concerned they should stand him against the wall. Everyone likes to do nostalgic trips, but this so called engineer reminiscing on the time he was powerful is
Sickening , scum of the world.
Okay, but if it wasn't of that film, a very few handful of people would have known about the Thai Rangoon death railway. It brought light to the Japanese atrocities. Also the movie was very successful with its script which helped it to reach the masses, otherwise who would have known about the blood, sweat and tears of POWs and slave laborers involved?
@@vcguerrilla6438 I don't know what age you are, but in the 50's and 60's plenty of people were well aware of the Japanese atrocities. There were several ex-service men in my small town, who were not in good shape physically or mentally, but it was not talked about widely in the community. Russell Braddon also wrote about his experiences in "Naked Island" way back in 1952, plus many more authors in the subsquent years. BOTRK only inflamed the FEPOW ex-serviceman's grievances and trauma.