Hellfire Pass

Hellfire Pass is the name the prisoners gave to the Konyu Cutting, the largest rock cutting on the Thailand-Burma Railway, about 80 km north-west of Kanchanaburi on the road to Sai Yok. Of all the railway sites, it is the one where visitors most often fall silent.

The cutting is about 75 m long and up to 25 m deep, driven through solid rock with hammers, drills, picks and explosives. In 1943, under pressure to finish the line, Australian, British and Dutch prisoners, along with Asian labourers, worked shifts of up to 18 hours a day here. At night the work went on by torchlight, and the sight of starving, half-naked men toiling in the flickering light gave the place its name. The work took about six weeks; dozens of men were beaten to death and many more died of disease, exhaustion and starvation in the camps nearby.

Today the site is a memorial run by the Australian government with the Royal Thai Armed Forces Development Command. The Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre at the top of the hill tells the story through photographs, objects and recorded testimony from survivors, and it is the best introduction before walking down. A trail and stairs lead from the museum to the cutting itself, where a short stretch of rail and sleepers has been relaid and visitors leave poppies, flags and small crosses against the rock walls.

Go early in the day if you can, before the heat and the tour groups, and give yourself time in the cutting itself.

From the interpretive centre, a path drops down through the forest to the start of the cutting. Walking through it takes only a few minutes, but the drill marks are still visible in the rock, and the scale of the work done by hand becomes obvious once you stand between the walls.

Beyond the cutting, a longer memorial walking trail follows the old railbed through the forest, past embankments, smaller cuttings and the site of a collapsed trestle bridge. The full trail is a few hours’ walk there and back, hot and exposed in places, so carry water and turn back when you have seen enough. Ask at the centre whether the whole route is open before setting out.

At the cutting, a memorial records the sacrifice of the prisoners and Asian labourers. Every 25 April, the Anzac Day dawn service held here draws hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders, including descendants of the men who worked on the line.

Hellfire Pass is on Route 323, the main road from Kanchanaburi to Sai Yok and Thong Pha Phum, about 80 km and a 90-minute drive north-west of town. The nearest station, Nam Tok Sai Yok Noi at the end of the railway, is about 18 km away. Most visitors come by tour, hired car or motorbike, or take a Kanchanaburi to Sangkhla Buri bus and ask to be dropped at the memorial.

Work on the cutting began in April 1943, at the start of the period the prisoners called “the Speedo”, when Japanese commanders demanded that the railway be finished on a forced timetable. Prisoners from the camps at Konyu and Hintok, many of them Australians, did much of the digging. In mid-1943 cholera swept through the Hintok camps, killing dozens of Australians in weeks, and the nearby Pack of Cards trestle bridge collapsed three times during construction.

After the war the line beyond Nam Tok was abandoned and the cutting was swallowed by forest. In the 1980s former prisoner Tom Morris began a campaign to preserve it, and the first Anzac Day dawn service was held at the cutting in 1990. The Australian government then built the memorial with Thai military support: it was formally established in 1996, and the interpretive centre opened in 1998. The centre was renovated in 2018.