The Burma Railway, also known as the Siam–Burma Railway, Thai–Burma Railway and similar names, or locally as the Death Railway (Thai: ทางรถไฟสายมรณะ), is a 415 km (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma (now Myanmar). It was built from 1940 to 1943 by abducted Southeast Asian civilians and captured Allied soldiers forced to work by the Japanese, to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. The name used by the Imperial Japanese Government was Tai–Men Rensetsu Tetsudō (泰緬連接鉄道), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway.
At least 250,000 Southeast Asian civilians were subjected to forced labour to ensure the construction of the Death Railway and more than 90,000 civilians died building it, as did around 12,000 Allied soldiers. The workers on the Thai side of the railway were Tamils, Malays, and fewer Chinese civilians from Malaya. Most workers were moved to 'rest camps' after October 1943. They remained in these after the end of the war as they watched the Allied prisoners of war being evacuated. Survivors were still living in the camps in 1947. They were British subjects who, without access to food or medical care, continued to die of malaria, dysentery and malnutrition.
In general, although some reparations were paid to some independent countries, no compensation or reparations have been provided to the Southeast Asian laborers. Some has been provided to the Allied POWs, although the situation is complex. Japan signed a treaty and offered reparations to the Indonesian and Burmese governments, and the Allies (excluding the Soviet Union) provided some compensation to POWs and relinquished further claims from Japan in the Treaty of San Francisco. The 1951 compensation to Allied POWs was seen as lacking; one former POW was given £76. The United Kingdom gave reparations to the 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (the most recent under the Blair government), but not to its colonial subjects.
Most of the railway was dismantled shortly after the war. Only the first 130 kilometres (81 mi) of the line in Thailand remain, with trains still running as far north as Nam Tok.
A railway route between Burma and Thailand, crossing Three Pagodas Pass and following the valley of the Khwae Noi river in Thailand, had been surveyed by the British government of Burma as early as 1885, but the proposed course of the line – through hilly jungle terrain divided by many rivers – was considered too difficult to undertake.
Thailand was a neutral country at the onset of World War II. On 8 December 1941, Japan invaded Thailand, which quickly surrendered. Thailand was forced to accept an alliance, and was used as a staging point for the attack on Singapore.
In early 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma and British forces quickly surrendered. To supply their forces in Burma, the Japanese depended upon the sea, bringing supplies and troops to Burma around the Malay Peninsula and through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, especially after the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. To avoid a hazardous 2,000-mile (3,200 km) sea journey around the Malay Peninsula, a railway from Bangkok to Rangoon seemed a feasible alternative. The Japanese began this project in June 1942.
The project aimed to connect Ban Pong in Thailand with Thanbyuzayat in Burma, linking up with existing railways at both places. Its route was through Three Pagodas Pass on the border of Thailand and Burma. 69 miles (111 km) of the railway were in Burma and the remaining 189 miles (304 km) were in Thailand. After preliminary work of airfields and infrastructure, construction of the railway began in Burma and Thailand on 16 September 1942. The projected completion date was December 1943. Much of the construction material, including tracks and sleepers, was brought from dismantled branches of Malaya's Federated Malay States Railway network and the East Indies' various rail networks.
The railway was completed ahead of schedule. On 17 October 1943, groups of civilians violently transported from Burma were forced to commence working south, meeting up with groups of civilians taken from Thailand who were working in a northerly direction. The two sections of the line met at kilometre 263, about 18 km (11 mi) south of the Three Pagodas Pass at Konkoita (nowadays: Kaeng Khoi Tha, Sangkhla Buri District, Kanchanaburi Province). A holiday was declared for 25 October, which was chosen as the ceremonial opening of the line. The Japanese staff would travel by train C56 31 from Nong Pladuk, Thailand to Thanbyuzayat, Burma. A copper spike was driven at the meeting point by commanding General Eiguma Ishida, and a memorial plaque was revealed.
The Japanese Army transported 500,000 tonnes of freight over the railway during the course of the war. Construction camps housing at least 1,000 workers each were established every 5–10 miles (8–17 km) of the route. Workers were moved up and down the railway line as needed. The construction camps consisted of open-sided barracks built of bamboo poles with thatched roofs. The barracks were about 60 m (66 yd) long with sleeping platforms raised above the ground on each side of an earthen floor. Two hundred people were housed in each barrack, giving each person a two-foot wide space in which to live and sleep. Camps were usually named after the kilometre where they were located. The worst months of the construction period were known as the "Speedo" (mid-spring to mid-October 1943).
Within a year of the Second World War ending, Britain retook Burma, Malaya, Singapore and the Straits Settlements, while facing bankruptcy. On 16 January 1946, the British ordered Japanese prisoners of war to remove a four-kilometre (2.5-mile) stretch of rail between Nikki (Ni Thea) and Sonkrai. The railway link between Thailand and Burma was to be separated again in order to protect British interests in Singapore. After that, the Burma section of the railway was sequentially removed, the rails were gathered in Mawlamyine, and the roadbed was returned to the jungle.
In October 1946, the Thai section of the line was sold to the Government of Thailand for £1,250,000 (50 million baht; equivalent to US$45,263,000 in 2025). The money was used to compensate neighbouring countries and colonies for material stolen by Japan during the construction of the railway. On 1 February 1947, two people—including Momluang Kri Dechatiwong, the Thai Minister of Transport—were killed on an inspection tour when the bridge near Konkoita collapsed. After the accident, it was decided to end the line at Nam Tok and reuse the remainder to rehabilitate the line.
After the war, the railway was in poor condition and needed reconstruction for use by the Royal Thai Railway system. On 24 June 1949, the portion from Kanchanaburi to Nong Pla Duk (Thai หนองปลาดุก) was finished; on the first of April 1952, the next section up to Wang Pho (Wangpo) was done. The two curved spans of the bridge which collapsed due to the British air attack were replaced by angular truss spans provided by Japan as part of their postwar reparations, thus forming the iconic bridge now seen today. Finally, on 1 July 1958, the rail line was completed to Nam Tok (Thai น้ำตก, 'waterfall', referring to the nearby Sai Yok Noi Waterfall) The portion in use today is some 130 km (81 mi) long.
The line was abandoned beyond Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi; the steel rails were salvaged for reuse in expanding the Bang Sue railway yard, reinforcing the Bangkok–Ban Phachi Junction double track, rehabilitating the track from Thung Song Junction to Trang, and constructing both the Nong Pla Duk–Suphan Buri and Ban Thung Pho–Khiri Rat Nikhom branch lines. Parts of the abandoned route have been converted into a walking trail.
Since the 1990s, various proposals have been made to rebuild the complete railway, but as of 2021 these plans had not been realised. Since the upper part of the Khwae valley is now flooded by the Vajiralongkorn Dam, and the surrounding terrain is mountainous, it would take extensive tunnelling to reconnect Thailand with Burma by rail.