True to life, faith and freedom in more ways than one. 
Image: https://www.christianbook.com/to-end-all-wars/pd/156999
Posted on 12/10/2022 6:28:53 PM PST by daniel1212
Based on real events during WWII, this is the story of four Allied POWs who are forced to build a railroad through the Burmese jungle. 2004 · 2 hr 1 mi [See comment for more description]
Based on ther book "Through the Valley of the Kwai" "To End All Wars" centers around Ernest Gordon, a young soldier who wants to create a school of higher learning despite the criticism of his superior officer, Ian Campbell, who insists on escape, and JimReardon, the lone American who is running a black market. Under the relentless brutality of the camp, the only way for the soldiers to survive is to find what gives their lives meaning.
This movie is based on actual events during World War 11 when 61,000 Allied POW’s were forced to build the Thailand-Burma Railway. The way they are treated is horrendous in this film, as they are bullied, tortured, beaten, and underfed.
[spoiler edited]
Although the film features themes of forgiveness and sacrifice, such as the men ministering to the Japanese wounded at war’s end, the violence level is strong.
- https://dove.org/review/8454-to-end-all-wars/
One of the relative few decent edifying films and legal to watch here. Basically ignore the rest.
Similar to Bridge on the River Kwai, one of my favorites when I was a kid and my first acquaintance with Alec Guiness.
Have to check it out. Thanks.
The beginning of the film looks lovely and I’m drawn to bagpipe music. (I’m half Scottish.)
I’ll watch this. Thanks!
Bookmark
True to life, faith and freedom in more ways than one.
Image: https://www.christianbook.com/to-end-all-wars/pd/156999
The bridge is still there. It was bombed by aircraft and then rebuilt with aid from Japan as war reparations.
The river is the “Kwae”, actually. “Kwai” is a Thai word meaning water buffalo. There is a Saphan Kwai [Kwai Bridge] in Bangkok, but it has nothing to do with the novel, or the railroad.
The railroad was built mainly up the east side of the Kwae river, a tributary of the Mae Khlong river, but does not cross it. The bridge was over the Mae Khlong river, to the east, just upstream from where the Kwae came in from the west.
The Thais, wanting to capitalize on the movie, and already having a railroad bridge in place, wanted have an actual “Bridge on the River Kwai”, but weren’t about to move the bridge. So they slightly renamed the rivers. They renamed the Mae Khlong upstream from the junction, including where the bridge is, as the “Kwae Yai” [big Kwae]; and named the actual Kwae as the “Kwae Noi” [little Kwae”].
They kept the name Mae Khlong for the part of the river after the Kwae Noi joins the Kwae Yai.
I’ve been up there several times. The railroad goes about twenty-thirty miles further up the Kwae Noi past the bridge.
Dad was in the Army and so that was one of our favorites.
Thanks for the info.
The Japs were brutal beyond belief. They deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And to this day they’re unrepentant about what they did.
Worse yet subsequent generations of young Japanese are totally ignorant of what their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers did during WW2.
To my knowledge no one ever escaped from the Burma-Thai Railroad of death. Some Australians and British were rescued by American submarines after the transport they had been crammed onto to haul them from Viet Nam to Japan was torpedoed and a handful of survivors were rescued, The Britons that were rescued took several months to get back to the UK where they wee viewed with suspicion by the Army and quickly forgotten and ignored by all save family.
There is a book, ‘Return From the River Kwai’, worth reading.
So true.
Actually Japanese don’t care much what lumps foreigners took, rather like Turks care the less what lumps various anti-Turk groups including Moslem Kurds had inflicted on them. As one Turk colonel told me; Greeks could be expelled to Greek lands, Kurds are Muslim so they needed to be taught which Muslims were on top (Turks). Armenians would never be anything but a fifth column waiting to back stab us. Push them over into Russia and they would just hang around waiting for the day they , with Russian help, could attack. So kill all of them. Americans , with their quaint shallow moralizing
attitudes have not a clue how most of the world thinks life is a zero sum game. Only when we finally have reality shoved down our throats will we stop being so self righteous. Remember, there is no right and wrong, just winning that matters.
“Japs were brutal beyond belief.” The young children and. Infants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved cremation. That was not brutal. US fighter pilots were ordered to strafe columns of fleeing women and children. Humans can be “brutal beyond belief.” Self rightiousness justifies brutality.
You are correct. We should have stayed out of WW1, but WW 2 should have ended with former german troops marching across Russia, while the Allies crushed and controlled China and SE Asia.
"When you go home, tell them of us and say - for your tomorrow we gave our today."
Near the Death Railway is an ancient Khmer temple with extensive grounds, Prasat Muang Singh. It is the furthest west Angkor style Khmer temple complex. I recall but cannot confirm that it was rediscovered by an escapee from the Death Railway.
I have the book “Return from the River Kwai”. There was a movie made about it which the BOTRK people sort of suppressed claiming copyright violation, which is ironic since “Return” was a factual account, and the Alec Guiness movie was fictional, albeit in a historical setting.
Anyway when I read the book I did an online search to see what happened to some of the submarines mentioned. One was the Pampanito, which I had never heard of before. Well, it turns out that the Pampanito is alive and well, and berthed at Pier 45 in San Francisco, and Cub Scouts spend the night on it. They have the Return book for sale at their gift shop.
Japan, while negotiating ‘’peace’’ in Washington, DC bought war to the US 81 years ago this month. The Japs started the war. America finished it and won.
Re your screen name, ‘’vhemgricht’’., German for ‘’pro vigilante''. Ironic, nicht wahr?
Who cares? Countries do what they can get away with. There is no moral order the universe of nation states. Only Americans and other English speakers believe the boy scout rhetoric you spout and not even those people at the top here and in the UK really believe it. It is just rhetoric to fool the boobs back in fly over country and get people to be stupid enough to hurry down and enlist in massive exercises in complete cynical manipulation such a Geo. W Bush’s ‘Global War on Terrorism’. I and mine had no skin in the game in SE Asia circa 1942, what the Japs did I could care less. I do know the Viet Minh greatly respected the Kempetai for the assistance and material support that organization provided Uncle Ho and the Lao Dong Party and for wrecking the Surete informer network as well as many Japs who joined the VM after V J Day. Why do adults such as you need fairy tales to sustain your world view. Just plain old fashioned pursuit of power and wealth is a lot more satisfying.
Oh, its you again, the dry drunk. I should have spared the pearls before swine.
Nice rhetoric, but truly irrelevant considering the theater. Burma did not mean squat to anyone in Europe or the western hemisphere.
Commie Harry Bridges fought this project with the full muscle of his longshoremen’s union. Bridges was enraged by what he saw as the memorialization of the US (enemy) submarine whose torpedoes had killed hundreds of ‘working class Aussies’ on the transports the Japs were using to haul POW’s to Nippon. Bridges literally saw this memorial as a trick for ‘capitalists’ to make money off of ‘exploiting a war crime’. The mindset of a real true believer marxist defies comprehension.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.