The Thailand-Burma Railway also called the Death Railway. The Thailand-Burma Railway and the Burma-Siam Railway and similar names were a 415 kilometer railway connecting Ban Pong , Thanbyuzayat and Thailand, Burma, created by the Empire of Japan in 1943 to support its influence in the Burmese countryside during World War II. Its function was to supply Japanese forces in Burma, as a diversion through sea routes which they had became susceptible when Japanese naval strength was reduced in the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in May and June 1942. Once the railway was finished, the Japanese resolved to attack the British in India and particularly the roads and airfields used by allies to supply China in the Himalayan mountains. Say no to plagiarism Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Aspiring to quickly complete the railway, the Japanese decided to use more than 60,000 Allied prisoners. which had fallen into their hands in early 1942. It includes British Empire troops, Dutch and Dutch East Indies colonial personnel, and a small number of US troops sunk on the USS Houston during the Battle of the Java Sea. About 13,000 prisoners working on the railway were Australians. When this workforce proved incapable of meeting the tight deadlines set by the Japanese for the completion of the railway, another 200,000 Asian or Romusha workers (the precise number is not known) were enticed or forced to work for the Japanese. it ran from Thanbyuzayat in Burma (now Myanmar) to Non Pladuk in Thailand. It was built by units working along its entire length rather than just at each end. This caused already difficult supply problems to become impossible during the monsoon season of mid-1943. Deprived of food and medicine and forced to work incredibly long hours in remote and unhealthy locations, over 12,000 POWs died, including including more than 2,700 Australians. The number of dead romusha is not known but probably amounted to 90,000. Approximately 90,000 manual laborers and more than 12,000 associated prisoners died. During its construction, between 180,000 and 250,000 Southeast Asian manual laborers and approximately 61,000 associated prisoners of war were subjected to forced labor. The first war prisoners were around 3,000 Australians who were sent to Burma and left Changi Prison in Singapore on 14 May 1942 and traveled by sea to Thanbyuzayat, the railway's northern station. They initially worked on airfields and other infrastructure before starting construction of the railway in October 1942. Around 3,000 British soldiers left Changi by train in June 1942 to Ban Pong, the southern terminus of the railway and worked in Thailand. More prisoners of war were brought in from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies as construction progressed. Construction camps were established every 5 to 10 miles (8 to 17 km) of the route, housing at least 1,000 workers each. Workers were moved up and down the railway line as desirable. - The construction camps consisted of open-sided shacks, built with bamboo poles and thatched roofs. The barracks were approximately sixty meters (66 yards) long with sleeping platforms raised off the ground on each side of an earth floor. Two hundred men were housed in each barrack, giving each a two-foot-wide space in which to live and sleep. Usually the fields were named after the kilometer where they were located.