Japan veteran seeks UN status for 'death railway'-Bridge on the River Kwai

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=6470440&cKey=1139991621000

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese war veteran who helped interrogate prisoners of war building the Thai-Burma railway during World War Two is seeking to preserve the "death railway" as a reminder of the horrors of war.

Takashi Nagase, 87, was once an interpreter for the military police, but he has devoted much of his life since the war to trying to atone for the actions of the Japanese military.

Allied prisoners, mostly British, Dutch and Australian, were forced to work on the railway in such harsh conditions that 16,000 of them died of starvation and disease. Many times that many local labourers also lost their lives.

Their plight was later brought to life in the Oscar-winning 1957 film "The Bridge on the River Kwai," and the railway in western Thailand has now become a tourist attraction.