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Plan of Nong Pladuc
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Supplied by Ron Tempel
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To enlarge click on map
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Group I
Working parties had increased, and later in June my turn came, I was now feeling a lot better but the food and conditions at Changi were very bleak, rice and green leaves were our diet, the water had to be boiled and the sanitary conditions were terrible, so I was glad to get away. With a party of 600 others we were herded into cattle trucks and driven up Malaya and into Thailand. We were the first working party to arrive at Non Pladuc and were treated very well, the food was a lot better then at Changi. Our first job was to clear a large area of trees and put up our atapi shelters, we were told a Japanese workshop was to be built there, then word got around that it was to be the start of a railway line to go 415kms to Burma.
By October the now infamous Death Railway was under way and the guards now arriving were Koreans and Sikhs, they were a lot more sadistic then the Japs, being held under by the Japs for a long time, it was now their turn to serve out the punishment and this they did with gusto. A large bamboo cane was carried by the guards, this was nicknamed the 'bamboo interpreter', if they wanted to get the message across, you would feel it on the most sensitive parts of your body.
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Church at Nong Pladuc
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Made from Bamboo with Atap Roof
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Prisoners were passing through Non Pladuc to work further up the track ( map of the camps ), they were expected to clear virgin jungle with next to no food, dysentery, malaria and beriberi with hardly any tools and equipment. Prisoners were returning with various ailments but the large ulcers that ate their way into the legs were particularly nasty, the only way to stop the ulcer was to amputate the limb.
Kurra Kurra Club
The Kurra Kurra Club was formed at Non Pladuc camp, to help the sick survive. The official description of the club was :
'A club formed in order to buy medical stuffs etc, for the ever increasing sick.'
By Fred Noel Taylor
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