In Kanchanaburi, Thailand, Silva Kumar led the cremation of 106 remains of Tamil laborers who suffered and died while constructing the Thailand-Burma Railway during World War II. This Buddhist ceremony acknowledged the long-overlooked history of these workers, whose brutal conditions went largely unrecorded. Silva's initiative, linked to the planned closure of the JEATH Museum, sheds light on the plight of the estimated 90,000 Asian laborers whose deaths have been historically ignored, contrasting it with the more documented suffering of approximately 12,000 Allied POWs.
"Under Japanese rule, Asian laborers were treated as expendable their suffering went unrecorded, and their deaths were ignored."
"Though promised wages, they were instead subjected to brutal labor. Many died from malnutrition, disease, and exhaustion, their bodies left in unmarked graves."
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