Category: Chungkai War Cemetery, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Categories: Commonwealth War Graves Commission | Oorlogsgravenstichting | World War II Cemeteries | Burma-Siam Railway | Thailand, World War II | Thailand, Cemeteries | Kanchanaburi, Thailand

Profiles are placed in this category with this text [[Category:Chungkai War Cemetery, Kanchanaburi, Thailand]] .

This Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery, designed by Colin St. Clair Oakes, contains 1427 Commonwealth and 314 Dutch interments of World War II. It is located a few kilometers outside the city of Kanchanaburi.

The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar).

Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma, worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre. The Japanese aimed at completing the railway in 14 months and work began in October 1942. The line, 424 kilometres long, was completed by December 1943.

The graves of those who died during the construction and maintenance of the Burma-Siam railway (except for the Americans, whose remains were repatriated) were transferred from camp burial grounds and isolated sites along the railway into three cemeteries at Chungkai and Kanchanaburi in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat in Myanmar.

Chungkai was one of the base camps on the railway and contained a hospital and church built by Allied prisoners of war. The war cemetery is the original burial ground started by the prisoners themselves, and the burials are mostly of men who died at the hospital.

There are now 1,426 Commonwealth and 313 Dutch burials of the Second World War in this cemetery.

See also:

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission - Chungkai War Cemetery
• Oorlogsgravenstichting (Dutch War Graves Foundation - Chungkai War Cemetery

Lionel Bascovitch 05 Feb 1915 Mile End, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom - 01 May 1943

Franklin Bennett 1919 Histon, Cambridgeshire, England, United Kingdom - 19 Oct 1943

Sidney Farrington 18 May 1917 Suffolk, England, United Kingdom - 01 Feb 1944

Leonard French abt 07 Dec 1914 Thetford, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom - 22 Nov 1943

Bernard Harvey 1907 Southampton, Hampshire, England - 03 Apr 1944

Kenneth Hood 08 Aug 1910 Leeds, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom - 20 Dec 1942

Jack Leemon 26 Mar 1910 Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia - 17 Apr 1962

George Mace abt 1914 - 17 Jul 1943

Francis McBrinn 1906 Belfast, Ireland - 12 Nov 1943

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