We will never know their names.
We will never know how many nor exactly where they came from.
We can, however, try to tell their story so that they will never be forgotten.
Beneath this obelisk is a vault that contains more than 10,000 sets of remains of Asian Forced Laborers (collectively known by the Japanese term ‘romusha’[1]). They are here because post-war development uncovered hundreds of graves. Because that land had once been part of Wat ThaWorn Wararam, the Abbot Luang Bpo took responsibility for those remains. Over the course of the next few years, three different burial events took place totaling over 10,000 skeletons and ashes.
The cremains were buried here because the playing field opposite the CWGC cemetery was one of the many hospitals operated by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during World War II and the area directly opposite this cemetery was the west end of a large encampment for the romusha who, like the Allied Prisoners of War (POWs), were concentrated here after the completion of the Thai-Burma Railway (TBR). Many of those in the camp died there or in that hospital.
The obelisk itself was constructed in 1957 by members of the temple community to mark this place as the “Grave of 10,000 Souls”. The Chinese character used does not denote a specific number but rather just a large number greater than 10,000. It also seems as if there were some additions, renovations done in 1972, but none of this is well documented. Because the identity of the dead was unknown at the time of construction, the chedi became known as Chedi Niranam or grave of the anonymous.
These Asian Forced Laborers were from many nations, brought to Kanchanaburi by the Japanese in 1942-43 to build the Thai-Burma Railway (see Section 2). No one will even know the exact numbers nor the distribution of those nationalities. It is reasonably well documented, however, that the largest group were Tamil-Indians from Malaya. Soon after they conquered Malaya, the IJA was tasked with building the TBR. Hundreds of IJA Railway Engineers were transferred from Malaya to Kanchanaburi. The original plan called for the hiring of workers from the surrounding countries to build that rail link. But the IJA soon realized that they also had some 200,000 Allied POWs who could also become manual laborers. It is generally believed that some 61,000 of those POWs worked the TBR. But the number of romusha totaled between 250 and 500,000[2]! The death rate of the POWs was about 20%; for the romusha closer to 40%.
But the cremains buried in this grave are those of the romusha who survived their work on the Railway. In the months following the completion of the TBR in OCT 1943, the IJA began consolidating all the workers, POWs and romusha alike, to Kanchanaburi. The POW portion of the camp started near the Bridge and extended almost to the current CWGC cemetery area. The romusha camp began near the cemetery on the opposite side of the SangChuto Road and ran almost to the aerodrome [3] to the east.
Some existing records suggest that the vast majority of those housed there were Tamils. Added to them were smaller groups of Javanese, Singaporean Chinese and even some Vietnamese. Unlike the Allied POWs buried nearby, there are no cemeteries for the romusha who died working the TBR. No one was keeping records of their names, dates or places of death. Many were never even properly buried. The Japanese were extremely afraid of cholera. They had the bodies of those who died (and in some cases even before they were actually dead) cremated in huge open fires. We know this from reports of POW survivors who the IJA guards forced to collect and burn those bodies.
As with the Allied POWs, deaths among the AFL continued to occur from the accumulated conditions that they experienced in the jungles. Thai witnesses say they would watch the hospital staff open a grave and place as many bodies as died that day into it before closing it at night and repeating the process each day, day after day, week after week.
Even the end of the war in AUG 1945 did not end the suffering of the romusha. Australian, British and US authorities acted extremely fast to move their soldiers to hospitals for examination and treatment and then repatriation as soon as possible. Not so for the romusha! Once again, they found themselves abandoned; unwanted and unassisted. They were on their own. Some stayed in Thailand and established new lives. Others set out on the trek homeward. That trek could take 6-8 months. Many very likely did not survive that portion of their ordeal.
In the 1990s, a group of Malaysian business men gathered together to try to find ways to memorialize the Tamils who died on the TBR. They managed to add a plaque to an existing memorial in Ipoh, Malaysia. Some of these men were sons of romusha survivors who had managed to return after the war. In 2024, this shrine was converted to its present condition after the Abbot gave his consent for this group to renovate the 1957 structure to tell the story of the TBR romusha.
[1] Romusha is used herein as a collective term to encompass all the Asian Forced Laborers of all nationalities who worked these projects.
[2] This figure includes 100,000 plus Tamils who were sent to work the Mergui Road project farther south.
[3] Currently, the city bus station sits in the middle of what was then the aerodrome; near the Paper Factory.