what impact did thhe Burma-Thailand Railway have on australia during World War 2?

In 1942 more than 20,000 Australians, together with large numbers of British and other allied troops, became prisoners of war after the fall of Singapore to the invading Japanese.

For the next four years most of these Australians were held at Changi prison, in difficult conditions. Some were sent to Japan to work in coalmines, and many were sent to work with other Allied soldiers and local conscripts on the building of a railway between Burma and Thailand. 330,000 worked on the line including 250,000 Asian labourers and 61,000 Allied prisoners of war, 12,000 of whom were Australians taken form Singapore after the surrender. It is thought that about 90,000 of the 250,000 labourers form Malaya, Thailand, Burma and India died, together with about 13,000 Allied prisoners.

The building of the railway involved 415 kilometers of clearing ground in the jungle cutting through hills of rock and builing bridges. There were 4 million cubic metres of earth to be moved, 3 million metres of rock to be broken and shifted, and 14 kilometres of bridges to be built. There was virtually no machinery available—only a few elephants and a lot of men with basic hand tools. The short timeline meant that men had to be worked hard to complete their tasks. Camps were set up along the route and men had certain quotas to complete by set dates. For the Japanese, there could be no delays and no failure if they were to support their Burma army. The safety of their colleagues depended on building the line.

The men who worked on the Burma/Thailand railway were appallingly mistreated, beaten, starved, denied medical supplies and forced to live and work in primitive and physically destructive conditions. A large percentage died during this experience.

14,972 Australians taken prisoner in Singapore approximately 12,000 worked on the Thai Burma railway

2,815 Australians died

The purpose of the railway was to support the war in Burma as it moved west into India. Japan couldn't go around Malaysia to bring in supplies because the British had submarines in the Indian Ocean so they decided to build a railway from near Bangkok to Rangoon Burma. Other than the Aussies who worked on the railway and any who might be in India, I doubt there was any direct impact on Australia.

It Looks like bot23 got a good copy and paste from the internet..

If your going to copy his for your homework make sure to heavily change the words around and make it your own :) haha

http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/ww2/anecdotes/d...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellfire_Pass

You may not be able to type "Burma Thailand Railway" into Google, but I'll bet your teacher has.

Bot 23 got it right 100%.

Looks like someone has homework due this weekend.