British PoWs and Japanese captors tell the story behind the railway of death

These candid illustrations form the visual centrepiece of the documentary, which also features interviews with some Japanese captors.

"It's hard to say but killing human beings is the last thing you should do," says Miko Kinoshita, one of the railway supervisors who now lives in Osaka, Japan. "That's what I learnt."

It took 60,000 Allied POWs (captured when Singapore fell to Japan on February 15, 1942) and 180,000 Asian labourers 14 months to construct the railway.

"My original group was 1,700 strong," says Alistair Urquhart, 94, author of The Forgotten Highlander, a memoir that documented his time as a PoW. "By the time that the railway was finished there were only 400 left. If you fell by the wayside you were left to die or they made sure you died. I had the worst nightmare just 10 days ago and we are talking about 70 years ago," says Alistair, formerly of the Gordon Highlanders, who lives in Dundee.

"The question of escaping was something we thought about but very quickly dismissed," says Sir Harold Atcherley, 95, author of Prisoner Of Japan, a war diary that recorded his life as a PoW. "You had about 1,200 miles to travel before you could get to safety."

First, staging camps had to be built along the railway. The Japanese made "fi t" prisoners work each day. They deemed very few to be unfit. Those too ill to work had their meagre rations reduced.

"After work when we returned there had to be a roll call of everybody with the odd one or two dead who had died out there," says Alistair. "They had to be down at the end at the side in order to prove the same number had returned as went out in the morning."

He was once beaten "for a night and a day" then put in a sweat box in which he couldn't stretch out or sit up. "I no longer remember much other than the pain, then I was put in the black hole. That really was probably the one time when I felt this was the end." Food supplies were inadequate.

Men sometimes had to live for weeks on little more than a small daily ration of maggot-infested rice with salt. Malaria, dysentery and cholera were rife. "We ate any vegetation we could," says Sir Harold. "Snakes were very good to eat if you could get them," recalls Jack. Bill Moylon, a Chelsea Pensioner of 98, ate lizards. He says: "They could be up to 18 inches long and were quite nice. You just killed them, skinned them and cooked them in some water in a pot." 

Medical equipment was also in scant supply. At one railway camp alone more than 120 legs had to be amputated as a result of jungle ulcers. "These were done with a saw borrowed from the Japanese, which they wanted back clean after the operation," recalls Sir Harold. 

Alistair was afflicted and took advice from an Allied camp doctor. "I said, 'What can I do?' He said, 'I don't have any drugs but if you go down to the latrine, pick up the maggots, count them, put them on your ulcer and let them do their work.' I said, 'What will they do?' And he told me, 'They'll eat all the rotten flesh and you've got a good chance you'll get a clean wound.'" 

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