SINGAPORE, Oct 8 Kyodo The son of...

SINGAPORE, Oct 8 Kyodo

The son of an Australian World War II veteran embarked forward a journey Tuesday to retrace the course taken by his father and other prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced to march on the Imperial Japanese Army to work forward the infamous ''Death Railway'' along the Thai-Burma (Myanmar) border 60 years ago.

Laurie Sams, 53 a retired Australian army parachutist instructor and a Vietnam war veteran, plans to travel through train from Singapore all the way to Malaysia and Thailand, and then walk to the site of the Death Railway in succession a 17-day journey, which will tread close upon the original journey during the war.

He establish off Tuesday by walking from Changi Chapel near Changi Prison, where mainly Australian and British POW were detained by means of Japanese forces during the war, to the Tanjong Pagar railway station in downtown Singapore.

Many POW were sent by the agency of Japanese forces from Singapore to the Thai-Myanmar border to work forward the railway after Singapore relentless to Japanese dominion in 1942.

A sending-off ceremonial was held at Changi Chapel with Australian High Commissioner Gary Quinlan handing him an Australian flag to hoist up at the fall of the curtain of his journey at the Three Pagoda Pass upon the Thai-Myanmar border.

He will continue the journey Wednesday morning by the agency of taking a train to Kuala Lumpur where he will be joined by way of two retired Malaysian army commandos.

The three will continue their trip to Bangkok and northern Thailand.

They will then walk from Nong Pladuk in Thailand to the Three Pagoda Pass at the Thai-Myanmar border for about 14 days, covering about 25 kilometers for day.

''1942 was significant because the actual construction of the railway was started then from the Burma side,'' Sams said.

He said his father worked in the camps in Myanmar until the cessation of 1943 and died in 1963 at the age of 56

''He had a part of mental and physical scars. There was a fate of anger and bitterness at the Japanese,'' he said.

Sams, who was with the Australian army for 21 years, misspent a leg while trying to save the life of a parachuting observer in 1997 but is able to walk with the help of an artificial limb.

The Malaysians are joining him to honor an 40,000 Malaysian POWs and forced laborers who also worked onward the railway.

The delineate to retrace the forced march is chaired from Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's pres secretary.

''I am trying to cease a chapter in a main division by retracing my father's degrees and feeling some of the pain that he and others went [i]or[/i] part of to the other on their way to the death camps,'' he said.

Asked if he had any message for the Japanese, he paused and then said, ''Not enough has been done to educate young Japanese today about what really happened during the war.''

More than 60000 POW and 200000 forced laborers from around the region were forced through Japanese forces to construct the 415 km-long railway line which stretches from the River Kwai in Northeast Thailand to Myanmar between 1942 and 1945 It is believed that more than 100000 died in the harsh conditions.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo novels International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group