Thai-Burma Railway

1943 · Japanese Wartime Locomotive · Work 35 of 1,871

What it was used for

The construction and operation of the 415-kilometre line between Thailand and Burma by the Japanese military. Japanese engineers had estimated five years before the war; it was built in about sixteen months and completed on 17 October 1943. The difference was paid in people: some 61,000 Allied prisoners of war worked on it and about 12,600 died — one in five. With them worked 180,000 to 250,000 Asian forced labourers, the rōmusha. No registers were kept for them; estimates of the dead run from 75,000 to over 90,000. They are estimates and will remain so.

What was new

Nothing. The line was technically ordinary; its only distinction is the speed at which it appeared, and the account that was settled for it. In a chapter about invention it stands for the other case: no new technology is needed to do in sixteen months what was costed at five years. Only people who cost nothing.