Kinsaiyok Jungle Camp No.1, 161.40km - Thailand

Kinsaiyok Jungle Camp No.1, 161.40km – Thailand

The Railway, which was 421 kms long of single track and 1m gauge, was constructed in a little over 12 months.

In the Kin Sai Yok area there were four working camps for POWs occupied during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway in world war II.

Located a short distance beyond Hellfire Pass the camps were: Kin Sai Yok main with prisoners of mixed nationality and the site of shooting of British prisoners; Kin Sai Yok Jungle Camp 1, Kin Sai Yok Jungle Camp 2, a rock quarry for rail ballast and Kin Sai Yok Jungle Camp 3.

Australian POWs of D Force, Dunlop Force and K and L Forces worked here in 1943-1944.

Following the arrival in Thailand,  ‘D Force was divided into four working Battalions – S, T, U and V.  Q and V worked at Kinsaiyok from March 1943.

Q Battalion consisted of mostly 2/40th Battalion they arrived on foot or by truck in mid-March. Later they moved (7) kms down river to a jungle camp.  It was from here POWs cleared a line leading back to Kinsaiyok.  On 24 July they moved to Krian Kri by barge and foot, staying here until the line was completed.

Two medical groups, K and L Forces Forces were raised by the Japanese to provide medical assistance to the Romusha who were dying in enormous numbers moved to Kinsaiyok camp and at an established ‘coolie’ hospital  – although what could they do without medical supplies?

‘In September 1943 when railway construction around the Hintok sector was completed, the Japanese concentrated Australians from Dunlop Force at Kinsaiyok, where they remained until January 1944. Among these prisoners was the Australian surgeon was ‘Weary’ Dunlop, who became Senior Medical Officer at the camp.’ we wish to acknowledge this information from Anzac Portal.

Dunlop later wrote:

‘Things at Kinsaiyok are very much at sixes and sevens. … Each group looks after its own sick, the hospital being run by a ‘Soviet of captains’, but no common policy, no common stores, no arrangements for diets or special segregation of disease. … Sanitation poor, with only one big latrine for all … More latrines are being put down, of the open type unfortunately, though otherwise well made. Flies as usual and an offensive smell. For ablution a little stream pouring down to the river with a walk of 440 yards. This is also, alas, used by numerous Tamils [They were a sanitation risk].’

[The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop, Melbourne, Nelson, 1986, 283-4.]