Please read the conditions of usage in the Copyright Policy.
Buying this Video Clip:
You can buy a DVD containing all the Video Clips shown on this site.
You can also buy the original program this Video Clip appeared in.
Video Clip Synopsis:
Weary Dunlop and his elderly comrades return to the site of the Thai-Burma railway. As prisoners of war they each had to dig three cubic metres of earth a day, virtually with their bare hands.
Duration:
2min 19sec
Return To The Thai-Burma Railway is an excerpt from the film Hellfire Pass (55 mins), produced in 1987.
Hellfire Pass: More than forty years after the notorious Thailand-Burma railway was completed, a group of Allied ex-servicemen, including an Australian contingent lead by Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop, returned to Hellfire Pass in Thailand to dedicate a monument to the thousands who died during its construction.
Hellfire Pass is a Film Australia National Interest Program.
Curriculum Focus: English
Year: 11-12
Theme: Wartime Work
War; Identity; Image and reality; Commemoration
ACT: | English course framework (11-12) — responding critically and analytically to texts |
NSW: | English Stage 6: Close study of text, Texts and society |
NT: | English Stage 1 Texts and contexts |
Qld: | English senior syllabus: Texts in their contexts; textual features; Constructedness of texts |
SA: | English Stage 1 Texts and contexts |
Tas: | Senior Secondary English: Ideas and issues strand; Texts and contexts strand; Applications strand |
Vic: | English Language: Unit 3 — Language in society; Unit 4 — Language in use |
WA: | English Year 11 — Print texts (non fiction), Non-print texts English Year 12 — Print texts (non-fiction), Non-print texts |
In 1942 more than 20,000 Australians, together with large numbers of British and other allied troops, became prisoners of war after the fall of Singapore to the invading Japanese.
For the next four years most of these Australians were held at Changi prison, in difficult conditions. Some were sent to Japan to work in coalmines, and many were sent to work with other Allied soldiers and local conscripts on the building of a railway between Burma and Thailand. 330,000 worked on the line, including
250,000 Asian labourers and 61,000 Allied prisoners of war — 12,000 of these Australians taken from Singapore after the surrender. It is thought that about
90,000 of the 250,000 labourers from Malaya, Thailand, Burma and India died, together with about 13,000 Allied prisoners.
The building involved 415 kilometres of clearing ground in the jungle, cutting through hills of rock, and building bridges. There were 4 million cubic metres of earth to be moved, 3 million metres of rock to be broken and shifted, and 14 kilometres of bridges to be built. There was virtually no machinery available - only a few elephants, and a lot of men with basic hand tools. The short time-line meant that men had to be worked hard to complete their tasks. Camps were set up along the route, and men had certain quotas to complete by set dates. For the Japanese, there could be no delays, and no failure if they were to support their Burma army. The safety of their colleagues depended on building the line.
These men were appallingly mistreated, beaten, starved, denied medical supplies, and forced to live and work in primitive and physically destructive conditions. A large percentage died during this experience.
Science Year 9-10, English Year 11-12, SOSE/HSIE Year 9-10