Chapter 17 - Kanchanaburi

Summary

The route of the Thai-Burma Railway started from Nong Pladuk, a very small village, ran though the northern suburbs of Banpong, then along the highway to Kanchanaburi, reaching it by way of the villages of Lookgae, Thāruanoi, Thāmoan and others. Kanchanaburi is a town sited alongside the North bank of the river about 50 km upstream from Banpong. Its population was about 3,000. The prefectural office was in a row of houses along the North bank. West of the town the prefectural boundary followed the course of the Mae Khlaung and became mountainous forest. Today it is the key point for tourists at the confluence of the Kwae Yai and the Kwae Noi. In the 1940s it was especially important to the railway construction unit, 9 Railway Regiment, and together with Banpong became the pivotal point in the construction. On Thai-side Sakamoto Unit as advance party came into the town and in early August set up their HQ.

The town was a centre for collecting and distributing commodities and for timber and ores from the mountainous outback: it was also a collecting point for commodities from over the Burma border … including smuggled goods. Because it relied on the Mae Khlaung for the transport of commodities the wharves on the river-front had become the centre of this small town. From antiquity Thailand had been prepared for invasion by the Burmese, and as a form of base defence work there was preserved a stone castle-gate in front of the prefectural office. The town was always called Kamburi for short by both Japanese soldiers and prisoners-of-war, and they called the castle-gate the ‘Gateway to Kamburi’, and it became the point they looked for as a guide-post to the street. There was a paper-factory with bamboo as the raw material: it had a tall chimney. On the highway to Kamburi it made a good sighting-point from a distance.

On the North side of the broad highway in the town is a wide grassy meadow. The railway halt was planned at its northern edge. The quarters of the railway engineers had been built on it.