Disease and survival on the Thai-Burma railway: lessons for modern tropical medicine?

Abstract

During the 2nd World War, large numbers of allied military personnel in south-east Asia became prisoners-of-war (POWs) of the Japanese. During their internment of three and a half years, they suffered undernutrition, exposure to tropical diseases and frequently overwork. Perhaps the harshest POW experience was the construction of the railway between Thailand and Burma. This paper explores the medical conditions during Far East imprisonment, and in particular on the Thai-Burma Railway, as well as the long-term health effects in post-war decades.

Temple Tracks

“…Workers were housed in jungle camps as they maintained the tracks and performed exacting manual labour for prolonged periods without rest in dangerous and unforgiving terrains, while disease and death were rampant. Scholars and survivors alike note the horrific hardships endured by the workers as well as the ghastly diseases and deaths they experienced (Gill and Parkes 2017). These narratives are graphically and evocatively memorialized in the personal eyewitness accounts of British (English 1989;Evers 1993;Reminick 2002) and American POWs (Crager 2008;LaForte and Marcello 1993).…”