We visited the Hellfire Pass Museum while in Kanchanaburi. The museum was built by the Australian Embassy and is very well done. This place and perhaps the allied grave yard were the most moving to me.
The Hellfire Pass was a particularly brutal area for the WWII POW's and local laborers, as the Japanese engineers forced them to work round the clock to meet their completion deadline. The name Hellfire came from the sight of the emaciated men working in the torch light looked eerily like hell.
There is an exhibit and film inside the museum, and outside you can walk along the pass. The workers would lay charges and then clear away the blast debris. They would drill holes to plant the explosives via a hand drill, and cart off the rock in a wheel barrow.
I won't go into all the details of it, but it was a sobering reminder of what man is capable of doing to each other. It seems like it was so long ago, but it happened in my parent's lifetime (or close enough).
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