Cholera hits POWs on death railway

15th June 1943: A terrifying new scourge hits the men struggling to survive the forced labour on the Burma-Siam railway

‘Man Dying of Cholera’, Ronald Searle, 1943.

In the prison camps of the Far East prisoners of war were struggling to survive the Japanese brutalities. Malnourished and ill-treated whilst forced to labour in the heat of Siam and Burma, many had already died. The unsanitary conditions in which they were forced to live were accepted as another hardship. Now…