Until 1957, when was released the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, world public opinion didn't know much about how was built the Burma Railway. The largely fictional film plot is loosely based on the building in 1943 of one of the railway bridges over the Mae Klong - renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s - at a place called Tha Ma Kham, 5km from the town of Kanchanaburi. This railway, also known as the Death Railway, was a 415km railway between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), built by the Empire of Japan during WWII, to support its forces in the Burma campaign.
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