In an effort to try and protect the local civilians, a group of locals (mostly officials and doctors) were encouraged to become members of Rash Behari Bose’s Indian Independence League. They formed a Peace Committee, headed by Dr Diwan Singh, which made every effort to try and alleviate the pain and suffering of the population at the hands of the Japanese. However, their efforts were to little avail, and Dr Singh was arrested along with approximately 2,000 of his Peace Committee associates. They were taken to the Cellular Jail, where they were subject to water torture, electric shocks and many other unimaginable forms of torture for a period of 82 days. Any survivors were taken off the island and shot and buried.
One of the British captives, Major A. G. Bird, who had imprisoned in Singapore, was used as an example by the Japanese. They used a fellow convict, Sarup Ram, to set Bird up in front of an improvised ‘trial’, where he was accused of spying. Wireless parts had been planted in the house where Bird had been held prisoner. Bird was found guilty, and his arms and legs were twisted and broken before he was decapitated by a sword in the hands of Colonel Bucho.
After the massacre of the majority of the Peace Committee, the Japanese resorted to inflicting terror on the women. They were abducted from their homes and taken to the officers club, where they would be raped by high-ranking officers. Shiploads of Korean girls were also brought in to appease the sexual appetite of the Japanese soldiers.
Towards the end of their three and a half years of occupation, the Japanese resorted to more desperate measures. It is believed that about 700 people from the south of Andaman were deported to an uninhabited island to grow food. According to one of the survivors, almost half of these people died as a result of drowning or being eaten by sharks, as they were pushed out into the darkness in inadequate boats. Others died of starvation or at the hands of Burmese pirates. A rescue mission went to the island after the Japanese left, and although they found only 12 survivors more than 100 skeletons were lying along the edges of the shore.
In December 1943, political control of the islands came under the Azad Hind government of Subhas Chandra Bose. There is much controversy as to how much Bose was really aware of at the time, although the judgement of some was that he had ‘failed his people’. On the only visit he ever made to the Andaman Islands, Bose went to Port Blair to raise the tricolour flag of the Indian National Army. The Japanese army made sure that he was sufficiently shielded from the local population so that information didn’t leak out regarding their treatment of the locals. There were quite a few attempts made by the Andamans to let him know about their suffering, and also that local Indian Nationalists were being tortured at the Cellular Jail. Bose placed the islands under the governorship of Lieutenant-Colonel Loganathan, and it is thought he had little involvement in the administration of the territory.
After the war Loganathan said that he only had partial authority over the islands, as the Japanese retained control of the police force and large areas of the government. He emphasized that he was powerless to prevent the worst atrocity of the occupation, which was the massacre of 44 members of the Indian Independence League in January 1944.
By the time the British regained control in 1945, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 of the 40,000 population of Port Blair had been brutally murdered, and the islands of the Andamans were a scene of complete devastation.
Death Railway
One of the most famous tourist attractions in Thailand is the bridge on the River Kwai, which was made famous by the 1957 film, starring Alec Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins. However, the bridge you see standing today is not the bridge that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and it is hard to imagine the suffering these people went through in order to build what became known as the Death Railway. The railway is not only testament to the cruelty of the Japanese during World War II, but also man’s bravery and determination, with approximately one in five prisoners dying during the construction.
Workers – no. employed – total deaths
Asian labourers – 200,000 – ±80,000
British POWs – 30,000 – 6,540
Dutch POWs – 18,000 – 2,830
Australian POWs – 13,000 – 2,710
American POWs – 700 – ±356
Korean and Japanese – 15,000 – 1,000
soldiers – 15,000 – 1,000
One of the main reasons for the construction of the railway was to overcome the reliance on sea transport as the only means of supplying Burma during Japan’s occupation in 1942. The sea route through the Strait of Malacca was prone to submarine attack and the Japanese decided an alternative method of transport was needed. The British had already considered a railway connection between Thailand and Burma, but it was considered to be too large a project. The Japanese, however, felt that it was possible and planned to start the project in June 1942, to connect Ban Pong with Thanbyuzayat. Engineers carried out a survey of the 415-km (258-mile) route and expressed considerable doubt about the economics of the project. However, with so much free labour at their disposal, in the form of Allied prisoners of war, the Japanese arranged for the construction to start immediately from both ends using metre gauge single track.
The route ran along the east bank of the Mae Klong River from Bangkok until it reached the Khwae Noi River. From there it had to cross the Mae Klong and run along the east bank of the Khawe Noi until it reached the mountains. It would cross the mountains at Three Pagodas Pass and then snake down towards Thanbyuzayat. Using this route meant they could utilize the rivers to help transport materials and men to the necessary sites.
The first prisoners arrived on 23 June, 1942, and started work by moving the tracks and sleepers from the disused yards of the Federal States of Malaya Railways (FMSR). The first bridge to be constructed was a wooden trestle across the Mae Klong. It was 220 m (240 yd) in length and was completed in February 1943. A second bridge, of concrete and steel construction, used semi-eliptic spans brought from Java, and this innovative piece of engineering was finished in July 1943. The two lines met at Konkuita on 17 October, 1943 after only 18 months of extremely hard work by both teams. The Burma teams built 152 km (95 miles) of track, while those from the Thailand end, a total of 263 km (163 miles).
The Japanese were so concerned with getting the railway track completed that they gave little or no concern for the welfare of their prisoners. They pushed them to their limit on a project that had been estimated to take over five years to complete, and death became commonplace.. Many of the prisoners were little more than teenagers, and the cruelty and callousness shown to those working in the jungle camps was unimaginable. By early 1943, disease, starvation and sheer overwork had killed so many of the prisoners that the Japanese were forced to hire 200,000 Asian coolies to help finish the railway. The men worked from dawn until after dark and often had to trudge many miles through the jungle to return to base camp where conditions were appalling and often steeped in mud, particularly during the rainy season. There was little, if any, medical treatment available to the prisoners and many suffered terribly before they died. A hospital for malaria, dysentery, pellagra and beri-beri patients existed in name only. It was a basic, dilapidated bamboo-framed structure with a thatched roof, where the sick were placed to wait their eventual death. Occasionally, a man would recover from his sickness, but he was rewarded by being sent straight back to work.