In May 43, the IJA made an unprecedented decision to evacuate thousands of debilitated F Force members into Burma. To accommodate them they reopened a camp at Thambaya (Km 50).
But Leslie Hall tells us in the book BLUE HAZE that there was another similar ‘hospital’ camp (aka death camp) established at Km 55 (Khon Khan). There had previously been a death camp at Km 80 Apalaine. Here about half the deaths in the Tharp Party occurred. But difficulties in supplying that camp prompted the IJA to shift the debilitated workers to Khon Khan. The eminent surgeon LtCol Albert Coates was placed in charge of that camp. Hall was an orderly there.
Throughout the Speedo period and the weeks following the completion of the Railway, 60% of all the deaths in Burma occurred in these two camps. One report from Tambaya states that as in early AUG, 250 of 1250 patients had died. The vast majority of the British graves at the Thanbuzayat CWGC cemetery are of F Force men who died there.
Although the CWGC grave data do not quite support these numbers, Hall claims that in total 350 men died at Khon Khan and 700 at Thambaya. Eventually, the survivors of Thambaya were transported back to Singapore.
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Hall death claims
In an attempt to verify or expand my dataset, I always check the data for those who are named as deceased POWs. Hall names about as many as any other author. But something else occurred in his book that I find confusing and can’t explain. He provides details of deaths for men who never existed! He names 2 Perth crewmen as deceased but they are not found in any other dataset. They are not listed as Perth crew nor among the CWGC graves! I considered that he might have created pseudonyms for these two. I did figure out that one name had simply been mis-spelt. He provides a cause and date of death for the other, but no such name or death is recorded elsewhere on that date. Was this simply faulty record keeping or memory or was there another motive involved?