The Death Railway

A POW’s memoir of a nightmare journey during WWII. “The first [book] that gives a comprehensive account of the death railway. An absorbing read.” —Richard Gough, author of Tony Poe’s CIA War

During World War II, after facing the indignity of surrender and the squalor of Changi prison, British and American POWs were herded into trucks by their Japanese captors and transported on a horrific rail journey into Thailand. They then marched for hundreds of miles along a jungle track through the torrential monsoon rains to miserable camps where there was little in the way of cover or accommodation.

Despite utter exhaustion, upon arrival at the camps, the men were forced to work on the road and rail links the Japanese needed to carry supplies and reinforcements for their assault upon British-held India. Despite the protests of the British and Australian officers, conditions in the malaria- and cholera-infested camps were utterly horrific. As Lieutenant Colonel Kappe wrote, the ‘barbarism’ they experienced at the hands of the Japanese had never ‘been equaled . . . in history’.

Kappe, therefore, set himself the task of documenting the atrocities the men of ‘F’ Force endured from May to October 1943, which resulted in more than three,zero men losing their lives. His report is reproduced here in full—every disturbing episode in this almost unbelievable drama, told as he saw and experienced it at first hand. Rarely has there been such a document produced in a prisoner of war camp, its survival being as monumental as the sufferings of the men described in its pages.