It was known as 'the Death Railway', 415 kilometres of track through the jungle and mountainous terrain stretching from Thailand to Burma — built on the sweat, blood and bodies of prisoners of war.
The Japanese armed forces captured 22,000 Australian soldiers, navy and airmen, nurses and civilians during World War II and more than one third of them died in captivity.
Private Tom Hale survived the horrific ordeal and lived out his days in the northern New South Wales town of Bonalbo where his funeral will be held on Monday.
Mr Hale died at age 95 last week.
Last year, Mr Hale told the ABC he had enlisted as an eager 21-year-old. His unit was fighting a defensive action in Timor trying to keep the Japanese from invading Australia when they were overrun, captured and sent to the notorious Changi prison in Singapore.
He was a prisoner for three years, 11 months and three weeks, first in Changi then on the Burma railway.
"The only way you survived was you had to have mates, you couldn't do it on your own," he said.
"When a bloke was sick out of the gang, whatever extra tucker his mates could scrounge or pinch from the Jap storeroom or the native garden at night, he got the lot until he got better, but it went around, you all got your turn."
The Japanese guards were brutal, rations were barely enough and the men were also starved of medicines.
"They gave us no assistance for medical help," he said.
"The Australians had some phenomenal doctors, how they ever did they job the job they did, I don't know. But they did.
"Especially when the cholera broke out, two doctors that absolutely shone and they never got recognised; they were both from Western Australia, Bruce Hunt and Kevin Fagan.
"I had some good mates, lost a lot of good mates to cholera."
'I'll never forgive'
Mr Hale told the ABC he could not shake his resentment after the experience.
"I'll never forgive the Japs to the day I die, not so much for the way they treated us, we were men we could handle it, but the way they treated the nurses and the nuns and the women and kids," he said.
"There were some very old Catholic nuns looking after the missionary plus the Australian and British nurses. They were told to get out and they said they weren't going to. They were going to look after the men, well I'd sooner not speak of what happened, the way they treated them.
While the world is focussed on Rohingya refugees now fleeing Myanmar, formerly Burma, last year it was Burmese monks and the risks they took to help prisoners who Tom Hale recalled.
"The main ones that stuck to us were those Burmese Buddhists, they were wonderful people," he said.
"They'd sneak stuff to us of a night when they got a chance. If they got caught they were tortured pretty bad or mostly they got shot which a lot of them did, but they kept doing it.
"When the war finished I was asking this old Buddhist fella why they kept doing it and the only answer he gave us was 'our faith.'
"I'm sorry to say it but I lost all faith in religion up there."
Battles at home
Coming home was tough for survivors, and not just because of the personal demons they had to overcome.
The Bonalbo RSL Sub-branch President Len Gotting knew Tom Hale for more than 50 years.
"They even had a bit of stigma from some of the returned soldiers, some of them said they didn't fight they didn't do anything," he said.
"They fought for a while before they were captured but they had to fight in harder ways than normal combat."
Tom Hale did not speak a lot about his past, still at times like ANZAC day or during quiet moments, Mr Gotting said stories about the deprivations would slip out.
"We fenced together and he'd come out with a funny yarn," Mr Gotting said.
"They were lucky someone didn't lose their head over that."
At one point, Tom Hale was ordered to build a cage for the commandant's parrot. The bird chewed threw the bamboo overnight and escaped earning Private Hale a flogging with a bamboo cane.
Bonalbo publican Paul Horne said when he took over the pub in town, Tom Hale came as part of the furniture.
"I remember when they were having a fundraiser for the tsunami in Japan, and someone said it to Tom as a joke, and he said 'where's the bucket? I'll piss in it.'
"That's how he felt about them I think, he had some bad memories."
Mr Horne remembers Tom telling him about being liberated.
"He said at the end they were starting to kill people off and it's lucky the Americans parachuted in when they did, otherwise he wouldn't have made it home," Mr Horne said.
Mate remembered
Robbie Gambley was another local Tom Hale occasionally confided in.
"People said: 'Tom Hale is the only man who could shoe a horse and carry on a conversation with a mouthful of nails,'" Mr Gambley said.
"He was a wonderful man."
Tom Hale worked for the NSW Department of Agriculture on the cattle tick program from the 1940s until his retirement in the 70s.
Len Gotting said he had a reputation for hard work.
"He would help anyone, he loved the RSL, he carried on the mateship and helping people all his life," Mr Gotting said.
"I'll remember him as a mate and a good citizen of Bonalbo.
"Bonalbo's lost their senior elder now. He was a font of all knowledge and his memory was good right up to the end."
