Hintok POW camp

In the Hin Tok area were six working camps for prisoners of war occupied during the construction of the Thailand-Burma Railway in world war II. These camps were Hin Tok Cement camp, where cement barges were unloaded; Hin Tok River with two camps and Hintok road with three camps.

'Dunlop Force' consisted of 878 Australians under the command of Lieutenant Colonel E.E. Dunlop. They departed from Java for Singapore on 4 January 1943 and from Singapore by train on 20 January, arriving at Ban Pong four days later. From Ban Pong they went on to the Konyu area where there were some 3,000 British troops already showing signs of complete breakdown from semi-starvation, disease and overwork. Here a group of some 600 Dutch prisoners also came under Dunlop's command and after two weeks of sleeping in the open, the whole force moved to Hin Tok Road camp over 3 kilometers from the river. At the end of March 1943 the first of 'D' force had begun to arrive in the area and part of it brought the strength of Hin Tok camp to about 1,000. [Ref: An Immortal Touch of The Death railway & River Kwai Bridge.]

Picture: The curved trestle bridge approximately 154 Km north of Nong Pladuk and approximately two Km south of Hin Tok station. This was one of six trestle bridges between Konyu cutting (Hellfire Pass) 152 Km and Hin Tok 155 Km from Nong Pladuk. Just north of Hin Tok station was the site of the Pack of Cards Bridge. This three tiered trestle bridge 400 yards long and eighty feet high fell down three times during its construction, hence its name. The site was abandoned in September 1943, when a high earth and rock embankment adjacent to it was completed. By the end of the war in 1945, the bridge structure had completely collapsed and disappeared under jungle growth. Photographs of the Hintok curved trestle bridge have been erroneously title The Pack of Cards Bridge. There is no known photograph of it.

Ayutthaya Historical Research