Bridge on the River Kwai.

The History Channel in Asia are about to do a programme about the infamous Thai-Burma Railway. This particular period in history holds a lot of interest for me as both my parents lived and fought in the RAF for the UK in WWII.

With this in mind and with the approach of Remembrance Day in the UK I thought I would write a few articles about the history of the area and my personal experiences when visiting Kanchanaburi. Sadly in my opinion there is little to record the terrible sacrifices made by allied prisoners here in Thailand and Burma.
Also locally despite Thailand's somewhat dubious involvement with the Japanese it should not be forgotten that thousands of Thais were forced to work alongside the prisoners as virtual slaves.

When I first visited Thailand back in 2000 I organised a trip from Bangkok to see the "Bridge on the River Kwai" made famous by the film of the same name. At that time my knowledge about what really happened here was limited.
As the bridge is often the feature that attracts tourists , especially those who do not have loved ones buried in the nearby war cemetery, I guess that this is a good place to start

Of course the bridge that you visit near Kanchanaburi, although constructed by Allied prisoners and Asian forced labour, is not the bridge featured in the film, the film was actually shot in Sri Lanka and the plot loosely fits in with real life events.

Interestingly the bridge does not span the River Kwai, since there is actually no such river, on a modern map of the area there are the rivers, Kwai Noi and Kwai Yai which merge together at Kanchanaburi to form the Mae Khlong River. However the Kwai Noi & Yai were renamed as such in the 1960's, some say as a result of the increasing tourist interest in the area following the release of the film. The current bridge spans the Kwai Yai to the North of the town at Tha Ma Kham.

When the railway reached the river in 1943 two bridges were built, initially a temporary wooden bridge, followed some months later by a steel and concrete structure running alongside.
In the film plot the fictional leader of the prisoners, Col Nicholson, becomes obsessed with completing the bridge, however this is a long way from the truth.
It is a fact that the prisoner's did their utmost to delay the building of the structure, introducing such things as white ants to the wooden parts (the ants eat wood) and making weak mixes of concrete for the supports.

The bridge was open to rail traffic for two years before it was successfully bombed by the Allies towards the end of the war, however much of what you see today is original. Some of the rounded metal spans were added later, ironically paid for by the Japanese as war reparation.

Nowadays one can walk across the bridge or ride on the train (3 times a day), walking over the river is not for the faint hearted as there is no guard rail and there are gaps in the deck cladding.

Of course the bridge itself is just one of the many historical attractions in the area and in later articles I will focus on, Hell Fire Pass,visiting by train, museums and the war cemetery.