I woke this morning to a documentary entitled the Bridge on the River Kwai on the Discovery Channel. I have seen it before but there nothing on TV on Sunday morning and so, I was sort of stuck with it; too lazy to do anything else. The most exciting news of the day so far might be Obama’s decision to officially run for the Presidency of the United States of America. That however had already been anticipated by too many people that it was not a surprise. My Sunday surprise was the revelation that my great-grandfather, my mother’s granddad might have been a forced laborer for the construction of the infamous death railway connecting Thailand and Myanmar, then Burma.
My mom told me that great-granddad was tapping running early in the morning when a couple of Japanese soldiers picked him up. I am unsure how she knows that but I assume it is one of those stories that are passed down orally. I presume that it happened in Malacca since I have strong family ties to the former Straits Settlements. Since then, he was never heard from again. Family presumed him to have died in Thailand or Burma.
His wife was rather young when that occurred. Back then when the general education level of the population was low especially among Malays, marriage occurred at a very young age. I am unsure when exactly my great-grandparents got married but my mom said she was about 20 by the time the Japanese occupied Malaya. With a kidnapped husband and fear of being disturbed by the Japanese soldiers, she had to place a pillow under her clothes to give her the appearance of being pregnant. It seems that the pregnancy trick works even in times of war.
I looked up for the railway on Wikipedia and discovered that if he was indeed a forced laborer constructing the railway, he would be among 200,000 Asian laborers that contributed to the line. If he had died building the line, he would be one of 100,000 Asians that died during the construction of the death railway. And unlike the Allied prisoners of war, I am unaware of any memorial dedicated to the anonymous Asians, which might include my great-grandfather.
Reading a map of the line on Wikipedia…
…I wonder where did he work at.