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Anybody who's seen David Lean's thrilling film, Bridge Over the River Kwai,
and rushes off to
Kanchanaburi to see the bridge itself is going to be in for a couple of
surprises. First off, the real bridge isn't made of huge logs hacked out of
the jungle, it's a simple construction of concrete and steel. Second, the
watercourse it spans isn't the River Kwai at all, it's the River Khwae, to
be precise Mae Nam Khwae Yai, the larger of the two Khwae rivers.
 Of
course, every non-Thai in the world who's seen the movie is going to go on
thinking of it as the bridge over the River Kwai and they're going to go on
calling it the bridge over the River Kwai, regardless of the fact that it's
really the bridge over the River Khwae, and this tends to irritate the local
population.
"It's Khwae," they're quick to tell you, slightly affronted, "not Kwai.
Kwai is buffalo." And buffaloes, despite their considerable contribution to
agriculture in Southeast Asia over the centuries, are not animals held in
very high esteem here. Apparently for all their plow-pulling power, they're
bit slow "upstairs," if you know what I mean. In fact, you can't do much
worse in this country than to call someone a "kwai."
"I know a kwai is a buffalo," I said to the staff at my hotel, but it's
your hotel sign, your menu, your tourist brochure. It's right here in black
and white or blue and gold or whatever: Kwai.
When I continued in this pedagogical vain, pointing out that yai is
always pronounced "yai," Pai (as in the town by that name) is always "pai"
and kwai (when talking buffalo) is always "kwai," then Kwai can't suddenly
be "khwae" just because you say so. The logic of this argument made complete
sense to my listeners, but my guess is nobody will change their signs or
their menus or their brochures, either _ and for a simple reason: They
wouldn't match the movie.
The River Khwae is the River Kwai all over Kanchanaburi because of
Hollywood. Mr Lean misspelled Khwae because the novelist Pierre Boulle, on
whose book the movie is based, misspelled it. To go out now and change the
spelling of the river would be to cut the link to the movie and the link to
the movie is what has put Kanchanaburi on the tourist map.
One thing you don't do in Kanchanaburi or in Thailand _ or anywhere else
for that matter _ is mess with success.
Of course, there is a simple solution to this problem, a solution not so
fanciful as you might think: remake the movie. Only this time get the name
right, "The Bridge Over the River Khwae". (And while you're at it cut out
all that infernal whistling).
Why not? Sure it was a great movie and David Lean was one of the greatest
directors of all time, but that was then. Of today's prime movie goers _
American 14-year-olds _ how many have ever heard of William Holden? Or Alec
Guiness, for that matter (unless they saw Star Wars six times)? No, the more
I think about it, the more sense it makes. I mean they've already bought the
rights to the book, so there's no new out of pocket there. And it was a
money-maker once so it's bound to be money-maker again, which helps line up
financial backers. Now all we have to do is work out the casting. Anthony
Hopkins could give us a break from his Hannibal the Cannibal routine and do
a fine job as the stubborn, idealist Col Nicholson. Brad Pitt works very
well, I think, as the insouciant American impostor, Shears. But who in the
world could ever replace Sessue Hayakawa as Col Saito? The man who gave us
the unforgettable, "What do you know of bushido?" and "Be happy in your
work."
No, on second thought, forget it. When you can't improve on the original,
leave it be and move on to something new and different. Our new film could
be based entirely on facts. There's certainly enough material for a few
dozen great scripts. All Hollywood has to do is write them up.
Yeah, I know. Forget that one, too.
The only other possibility that comes to mind is to sweep through
Kanchanaburi Province late some night with a paint brush and change all the
signs to read Khwae instead of Kwai, but, of course that would be a tourist
disaster. I can hear the visitor from Stuttgart or Lyon or Osaka or
especially Cleveland, Ohio right now: "What's this River Khwae, stuff? I
didn't come here to see a bridge over some River Khwae. I wanna see the
bridge over the River Kwai. Where's that bridge?
Well just leave the name alone for now. The real fascination of the
bridge is not in the name, anyway, nor even in the Hollywood association,
but in the history of the bridge and the railway that crossed it.
If war is hell, then things could hardly have been more hellish than
working on the Burma-Thailand railway line from 1942-1945. Called the Death
Railway for the numbers of labourers it killed during construction, it was a
frantic effort by the Japanese Imperial Army to construct an alternate
supply line between the two Southeast Asian capitals of Rangoon and Bangkok,
a line which would allow them to avoid the dangerous Malacca Straits where
the Allies, after the American victory at Midway, were successfully bombing
Japanese shipping.
An estimated 60,000 PoWs and 200,000 Asian conscripts laboured in the
tropical heat on a starvation diet, many suffering from malaria, dysentery,
scurvy what all, using inadequate tools, hacking the rail bed out of nearly
impenetrable jungle. At Hellfire Pass, about 80 kilometres up river from the
famous bridge, slave labour cut holes for explosives in solid rock using
nothing but rusty old hammers and hand held steel taps. Human beings dropped
like the rain through which they often laboured.
Twelve thousand PoWs and 90,000 Asian conscripts died in 15 month period,
most during an interval called "Speedo," when the work day was increased to
18 hours. The big push to finish the job before the war was lost meant men
were dragged off their sickbeds to the job site. If you could stand you
could work. And even if you couldn't stand. Punishment for non-compliance
was cruel and often lethal.
It was ironic that my visit to the World War II museums in Kanchanaburi,
including the excellent Hellfire Pass Memorial, just happened to correspond
with the violent protests by students throughout China over Japan's failure
to own up to its atrocities during WW II. In the minds of many Asians,
particularly the Chinese and the Koreans, Japan has never adequately
apologised for the war crimes it committed during that period of the world's
history, all on record and indisputable. Why not do so and put the past
forever behind?
I walked the rail bed at Hellfire Pass to get a personal look at the
landscape. The rail bed is intact, unchanged since the war, but the
surrounding countryside is now farmland, not jungle. I'd like to say that
walking through the pass I could get a sense of the hammers ringing, the
sweat pouring off the diseased and emaciated bodies, but of course I could
not. It was a hot day, but comfortable in the shade of forest. I was
well-fed, clothed, shod and nobody was about to hit me in the face with a
rifle butt if I took a breather.
War memorials, however well conceived and executed can't really put us in
the place or the time they memorialise. But they can put the place and the
time in our memories, where it's our responsibility to keep them.
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