This Camp was about 125km North of Bangkok on the River Daun Naung. About 300 men were picked and taken by lorry to North Thailand. There was no camp on arrival just a padey field full of water. Japanese officer told party that tomorrow all men build camp. There were 2 huts built in 2 days.

The work was to tunnel through the mountainside to make ammunition dumps. The work was done by hammer and tap, then blasting with dynamite. The work was very hard.

From Henry (No Surname) of Surrey

After a few days in Chungkai our group of 500 Dutch POWs had to move up country to our first labour camp, but not before we had to listen to a speech by the Jap camp commander. I, and most of us, don't remember much about his nonsense other than:

"You should be honored and feel privileged that you are helping to undertake such a great project under Japanese leadership, and therefore you shall have to work hard to earn this honor."

Well, we learned the truth of that last statement. We walked, a long line of men, on a small sandy road which soon became a jungle trail. The walk took three days. Many fell ill with dysentery, malaria and injured feet. In the late afternoon of the third day, we halted in a clearing in the forest along the River Kwai. On one side, near the river, were three large, new tents for the Japanese camp commander and the Korean guards. On the other side, near the edge of the forest, stood an old, threadbare, grubby tent which was the hospital tent for the gravely ill. Everybody else had to find a spot near the bushes or under the trees at the edges of the camp.

Luckily the dry monsoon was still there for a few more months. Roll call had everybody out next morning before daylight. For breakfast we got a small bowl of rice gruel. Our doctor had kept some sick men away from the labor groups. This was not appreciated by the Japs, who kicked a number of these men towards the labor details. When the doctor protested vehemently, four guards went at him with sticks until he fell unconscious to the ground. After a few hours the guards threw water on his face and allowed him to be dragged off to his 'hospital tent'. This way the Japs made it clear how they would run things.

The railroad to be worked on was about 6 kilometers from the camp. One detail cut a wide swath through the forest by sawing down trees and hacking away the brush. Other groups started the initial foundation work for the railroad. The work was done by hand with picks and shovels. Woven baskets were used to dump the soil where it was needed. Each man had to move one cubic meter of soil. This was measured very precisely by the Japs at the end of the day by the finished piece of railroad. Only when the measurement was correct could the labour details return to the camp. If not, we had to keep working by torch light. This happened more and more as increasing numbers of men fell ill. It was very heavy labour under the broiling sun. The water in our
canteens was soon gone and water for tea was brought by two men once a day, from the river 6 km away. Those men also brought the rice gruel for lunch. We got 10 minutes to eat gruel and drink tea, and then it was back to work. If things did not go fast enough or if we did not work hard enough according to the Japs, we would get beaten with bamboo sticks, shovels or rifle butts. For the first time in my life I learned what thirst really meant: mouth and throat dry as a cork, swollen lips, visions of faucets giving cool, clear water as much as you wished.

Due to the merciless slave labour conditions, not enough food (three bowls of gruel and at night sometimes pumpkin soup), and lack of sleep on account of mosquitoes or diarrhea, the number of seriously ill rose daily. There was dysentery, malaria and badly torn feet by tropical sores because many of us did not have shoes anymore and worked with bare feet. Now every day people were dying. Nobody escaped contagious illnesses like dysentery; I also suffered my first painful bout with that. The nights were worst when the cramps forced you to crawl in pitch dark to the latrines at the edge of the forest.

The latrines were ditches up to 3 meters deep with bamboo trunks laid across. Among familiar faces I saw [Han Samethini's] at a roll call of dysentery patients. In spite of his pleading, our doctor did not receive any medications. The Thai name for the camp site was Nombredai, which we immediately changed to "Nonparadise" - it was hell more than anything else. And yet, it would get much worse later in the labour camps upstream, in the rocky jungle mountains, in the rainy season. We got a few days rest after finishing our part of the railroad, and then we marched to the next labour camp.

From Dutch POW Felix Bakker

"We were assembled on a square in front of the Japanese guards and got a speech by the Jap commander who in short told us that we were now in the service of the Tenno Heika, a great honor. We had to build a railroad which meant hard work, but we would get good treatment and good food. In all, he compared it to a vacation camp at a resort. But we had to promise and sign an agreement that we would not escape because that would incur the death penalty. The first joys of the resort: beatings and robbings. Totally broken down and in great poverty as to clothing and other possessions, we returned to the barracks. There we met Australian and English fellow prisoners, and after talking to them we drew the conclusion that we had arrived in hell instead of a resort. Then the trip to Chungkai and 10 kilometers further. Camp chores and onward to Nonbaradai with a sadistic commander and worse Korean guards. ("My story becomes a monotony", Multatuli wrote). Tremendous beatings. Sick people with malaria and dysentery had to work. A real hell camp. When this camp was abandoned half of the 800 men working there had died. The rest were transported mostly to Chungkai which had become a hospital camp. I had severe dysentery and was bitten by a klabang, a highly poisonous centipede. Yet it is thanks to that klabang that I could stay in this comparatively good camp Chungkai during the largest part of my time on the Death Railway..."

By Dutch FEPOW Philip Brugman, as quoted in the book WERKERS AAN DE BURMASPOORWEG (Workers on the Burma Railway) by H.L. Leffelaar & E. van Witsen. Translation of the relevant passage by Margie Samethini-Bellamy:

Keeping The Candle Burning

In Memory of FEPOW Family Loved Ones

Who Suffered in the Far East

Thanks for all the support

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