Sunken station resurfaces from Thai reservoir

AP

Kanchanaburi

A depot on World War II's infamous “Death Railway” has resurfaced from beneath a reservoir where the site has remained underwater for decades, prompting researchers to race to western Thailand to survey the remnants of Nithe Station.

Thousands of Allied prisoners of war and Asian laborers toiled and died building the railway, a supply route through mainland Southeast Asia for the occupying Japanese forces.

The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand recently drained the reservoir at Vajiralongkorn Dam for maintenance, revealing the station. Historians are seizing the uncommon opportunity to further study the site in Kanchanaburi province for artifacts and to verify details.

But time is limited, as the completion of the dam's maintenance in August and Southeast Asia's rainy season may begin refilling the reservoir.

Nithe was a major station along the 415-kilometer (257-mile) railway that connected Thailand, known at the time as Siam, with Myanmar, known then as Burma.

The railway was built by about 60,000 Allied POWs mainly from Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Indonesia, known then as the Dutch East Indies, as well as hundreds of thousands of Asian laborers, whom the Japanese called römusha.