About this Page

I called this page the "Forgotten Death Railway", because most people will have heard of the Burma Railway. There won't be many people who haven't seen the movie "The River Kwai". This kept the memory of the railway alive. Unlike the Burma Railway the Pakan Baroe Railway was never used after the war and was soon broken up. Hardly anything remains to remind us of the inhuman suffering that occurred there. Not only by the Europeans who worked there but also the Indonesian slave labourers.

My interest in the Pakanbaroe railway stems from the fact that my father was one of the prisoners, who worked there. When the camp was liberated, he was initially overlooked and believed dead. Fortunately somebody noticed a slight movement from his body and subsequently he was rescued.

I myself with my mother and two sisters spent three years in Japanese camps on Java. Adek and Kramat in Batavia and Tjihapit in Bandoeng. I was 6 years old at the end of the war.

My parents refused to talk about the years in captivity and thus this part of my life has always been a vague memory, with a lot of questions and no answers. I also believe that it has caused a lot of anxiety throughout my life.

After reading two books from Henk Hovinga named "Doden spoorweg door het oerwoud" and "Eindstation Pakan Baroe",  I decided to make this page. 

After the war a monument of sorts was erected where the main cemetery used to be. This was removed during the President Sukarno regime on request from the Japanese.

I believe that most bodies were relocated to war cemeteries on Java.

I would like to see this monument replaced. If not at the location of the cemetery, which is now almost completely overgrown, but maybe in Pakanbaru as it is called now.

The cemetery, with what looks like the missing monument

The location of the cemetery in 1976