The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
Prachuap Kiri Khan, Thailand. c. 1945-10. Two members of the War Graves Commission survey party (left) standing under the attap roof of an open sided prisoner of war (POW) hut. Up to ninety Allied POW's were routinely forced into huts of this size by the Japanese. The site, on the east coast of Thailand, was a staging camp on the Singapore-Bangkok railway for Allied prisoners of war being transported by train from Changi to construct the Burma-Thailand railway. In April 1945 a work party of 600 British, 120 Australian and 211 Dutch left Nakom Paton (fifty six kilometres west of Bangkok) for Prachuap Kiri Khan 313 kilometres south of Bangkok on the east coast of Thailand. Approximately fifty per cent were selected from the hospital patients by the Japanese medical officer, Neguchi, who showed no regard for their physical condition. The group was given the task of completing a road which had been under construction by Japanese and native labour working eastwards from Mergui on the Burmese coast. This was to be an escape route for the Japanese forces who anticipated a push by Allied forces down the coast from Rangoon. The POWs engaged in this task suffered many hardships over the four month period, resulting in the deaths of over 250 men.
Prachuap Kiri Khan, Thailand. c. October 1945. Graves of Allied prisoners of war (POW) at the Kroan Beach cemetery. The cemetery contained the remains of men who died at the nearby Prachuap Kiri Khan
Prachuap Kiri Khan, Thailand. c. October 1945. Left right: Lieutenant Jack H. Leemon (bare-chested), 26th Australian Graves Registration Unit (26 AGRU); Lieutenant Eldridge, British War Graves; and Ma
Burma. September 1945. Members of the War Graves Commission survey party examining a cholera cemetery at the Tanbaya fifty kilometre hospital camp site. Allied prisoners of war (POWs) who died of chol
Nakom Paton, Thailand. 18 September 1945. Allied ex-prisoners of war (POWs) of the Japanese who are patients in ward 18 of the Nakom Paton POW Hospital Camp. These men were working on the Japanese def
Kanchanaburi, Thailand. c. 1943. (Also called Kanburi by POWs). The entrance to the headquarters of the Japanese 5th railway regiment of the Southern Army Railway Corps, responsible for overseeing con
Nakom Paton, Thailand. 21 September 1945. Aerial photograph of Nakom Paton prisoner of war (POW) hospital camp. In January 1944, using POW and native labour, the Japanese began the construction of thi
