The Death Railway stretched for 415 km from Thanbyuzayat in Burma to Nong Pladuk in Bangpong District in Ratchaburi province in Thailand. 304 km of the railway was located in Thailand and the remaining 111 km in Burma.

More than 16,000 prisoners died during the construction of the railway or about thirty-eight prisoners for every km of railway built. The prisoners died because of sickness, malnutrition and exhaustion. There was very little or no medical treatment available and many prisoners suffered horribly before they died.

The prisoner's diet consisted of rice and salted vegetables served twice a day. Sometimes they were forced to work up to sixteen hours a day under atrocious conditions. Many prisoners were tortured for the smallest offenses. The Japanese commander's motto was "if you work hard you will be treated well, but if you do not work hard you will be punished."

Punishments included savage beatings, being made to kneel on sharp sticks while holding a boulder for one to three hours at a time and being tied to a tree with barbed wire and left there for two to three days without any food or water.

After the railway was completed, 30,000 prisoners were kept in six camps along the railway to maintain it. These camps were close to the bridge and other strategic positions so they became vulnerable to Allied attacks and many prisoners were killed in bombing raids.

Visiting Kanchanaburi today, it is hard to imagine the suffering the prisoners went through in order to build the Death Railway. 61,700 prisoners were brought in to build the railroad. They came mostly from camps in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and they had been captured in earlier battles with the Japanese.

The railway was built with a few pulleys, derricks, cement mixers, a lot of hard labor and a tremendous amount of ingenuity. It took a tremendous toll on its builders.

approximately one in five prisoners died during the construction of the railway. It is estimated that every railway sleeping car cost the life of one prisoner.

Every year in the first week of December there is a sound and light show at the bridge commemorating the Allied bombing of the Death Railway in 1945. The railway today only exists as far as Nam Tok at the 130 km point.