One of the biggest surprises for me during Semester at Sea was seeing remnants from World War II in nearly every country visited thus far. In the Bahamas, I saw a memorial to those who fought for the British crown. In Morocco, I saw WWII cemeteries for North African soldiers. In Namibia, I saw old gun posts and headquarters that the German colonial powers built to prepare for war in South Africa. In Thailand, I visited the River Kwai in the far west region of the country to see the work of Allied prisoners of war and to honor their memory.
The POWs that worked on the River Kwai were immortalized in the book and movie, “Bridge On the River Kwai.” I’ve heard many former POWs do not care for the movie because their captors are too favorably portrayed; that’s debatable. In any event, I thought it was important that the labors and pains of Allied soldiers were not forgotten. Most of the POWs were British or Dutch, along with some Australians and Americans. They were used for the construction of a Thai-Burma railroad, the purpose of which was for the Japanese to connect their Thai posts to their Burma personnel and supplies. Today that railroad is known as the Death Railway because more than 9,000 POWs died from disease, exhaustion or torture.
My trip began there, at the Wang Phu outpost on the Death Railway. We waited nearly 45 minutes in the thick humidity for the late train to arrive. When the train finally came, we boarded already dehydrated and exhausted from the temperature. The ride was rocky but beautiful, and the breeze through the window was refreshing and reenergizing. While riding the train, I began talking with a SAS professor. I asked her why she chose to come on this trip instead of heading to the beaches of Phuket like so many other SAS members. She peered at the view sliding by and replied that her father was a British POW from 1941 to 1945 who worked on the railroad. We rode on in silence — each of us trying to imagine the work required to build a railroad through the dense jungle. I looked at track number marks and wondered who placed the beams. What was his story? After riding the train for an hour, we arrived at the famous Bridge on the River Kwai. It’s industrial-looking and surrounded by a flourishing town, unlike in the movie. Floating houses and markets are scattered on the river below. Tourists, mainly Dutch, snap photos in front of the bridge. Nearby there is a memorial wall dedicated to the POWs who built the bridge, and a plaque from the Veterans of Foreign Wars acknowledges the deaths of nearly 700 Americans who died as POWs.
Our tour guide took us to the Allied War cemetery that the local government constructed for the countries of those perished. There are not any U.S. POWs buried there today because the United States’ policy is to get all deceased military out of areas of former enemy territory. There were more than 6,000 graves at the site we visited. I did my best to read the headstones to recognize each name. The most poignant for me was D.R. Briggs, Corps of Military Police, age 20. His family wrote, “Some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.” War is when countries are forever intermingled because of death.
The following morning we took a brief boat tour on the river before entering the JEATH Museum that tourists created in the early 1970s to appreciate the labor of the POWs. JEATH stands for all the nations involved in the Japanese POW camp: Japan, England, Australia/America, Thailand and Holland. This museum is a replica POW hut with thatched bamboo tables. Each POW had 2.5 feet of sleeping space and received small daily rations of rice and water. The camp mantra was, “Work or Starve.” The hut also was filled with pictures diagramming torture methods and detailing all the imaginable horrors associated with living in a POW camp.
I’ve seen vestiges of WWII in nearly every port. As I peered up to the Burma-Thai mountain range, I thought about the sheer magnitude of WWII. I don’t think I ever absorbed the words “world war” before. Now I realize that death and destruction were once an incomprehensible scale — but the war ended and peace returned to a ravaged world. Perhaps there’s always hope to be found.
Katie’s column runs biweekly on Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.rember@cavalierdaily.com
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