Burma-Siam Railroad

In 1943, the Japanese completed a railroad that ran through south Asia, to transport supplies for the war. Finished, it ran 415 km and was completed in just 16 months.

The Japanese used forced labor, in the form of civilians thorughout Asia (200,000) and Prisoners of War (68,000), to build and maintain it. Conditions were harsh. Laborers lived in huts with no roof. Cholera ran rampant and was not treated. The Japanese ignored the international rules regarding POWs. Officers were made to work. Laborers were often severly beaten for trivial or made-up reasons. Those that were sick were forced to work and often returned on stretcher, dead.

The prisoners were instructed to dig deep holes, to act as tank traps (in the virgin jungle, no less). Later evidence suggests the Japanese intended to use them as mass graves. A fuel depot nearby would be used to set prisoners aflame, and the charred remains would then be bulldozed over.

After the Japanese surrended, those at the railroad simply abandoned it, and did not even notify the prisoners. Prisoners awoke on August 18, 1945 to find the camp empty of Japanese. By the end, there were 96,000 dead prisoners, 18,000 of which were POWs.

Sources:
http://www.historyinfilm.com/kwai/fred.htm
http://www.bmw.ukf.net/3pagodas/

Between the years 1942 and 1943, during World War II, the imperial Japanese Army built a railway from Ban Pong, in Thailand, to Thanbyuzayat, in Burma.

The railway was around 258 miles long, and was built through some most horrid, disease ridden areas on the planet and was to supply a large Japanese Army in Burma.

The railroad however, was not built primarily through machines. No, it was built by the POWs and civilian internees that the Japanese had captured as a means of punishing them. The Japanese soldiers, at the time, believed that surrender was a disgrace and were taught that other Asian cultures (especially Chinese) were inferior. Despite this, it still doesn't explain some of the worst atrocities they committed, such as the Bataan Death March and The Rape of Nanking.

The project resulted in a huge loss of life of the Allied Prisoners of War and Asian forced labour that were used to construct it. An estimated 13,000 POWs and 80,000 Asian labourers died of disease, sickness, starvation and brutality at the hands of the Japanese.