Medical Officers on the Infamous Burma Railway

An account by British Medics of the treatment of the WWII PoWs by the Japanese in war camps of the Death Railway.

In 1944, a compilation of medical reports from the main prisoner of war work camps along the infamous Thailand-Burma railway was submitted to General Arimura Tsunemichi, commander of the Japanese Prisoner of War Administration. The authors stated that the reports were neither complaints nor protests, but merely statements of fact. The prisoners received only one reply—that all copies of the documents must be destroyed. As one officer later recalled, ‘Of course, this was not done’ and copies of these reports survived, stored away in dusty files, for future generations to learn the truth.

Work on the railway began in June 1942, the Japanese using mainly forced civilian labour as well as some twelve,zero British and Commonwealth PoWs. Such is well-known. So are the stories of ill-treatment and brutality. The reports presented here are quite unique, for they were written by the medical officers in the camps, enabling us to learn exactly how the men were treated in unprecedented detail.

We learn how the medical officers dealt with the terrible diseases, beatings and malnutrition the men endured. forty-five per cent of the men under their care died in the course of just twelve months. Through the words of the Medical Officers themselves, the details of what really happened on the Death Railway, for good or ill, is revealed here.