Hellfire Pass

'Hellfire Pass' is the name given by Allied prisoners of war to a large railway cutting excavated through rock and jungle terrain using simple hand tools such as picks and shovels. At night, torches gave it the look of 'hellfire'.

Located on Highway 323 about 80 km northwest of Kanchanaburi, the cutting was one of the most difficult stretches of the Thailand-Burma 'Death Railway', built by the Japanese using slave labor during World War II. Very few of the prisoners who worked on the stretch survived the ordeal, and many are buried in the Konyu Cemetery nearby.

Although the railway and cutting have long been abandoned, a memorial has been erected to the Allied Prisoners of War and Asian conscripts who died there. A trail follows the railway through the cutting, and then goes up through the forest to a hillside viewpoint. Buses from Kanchanaburi to Thong Pha Phum and Sangkhla Buri pass the turn-off for the Hellfire Pass at the Royal Thai Army farm. The trail from the farm to the cutting is steep in places.

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