It was one of those strange coincidences of life which took place near the old River Kwai in Thailand.  At this site during World War 2, the Japanese occupation army used slave labor to build a Thai-Burmese jungle railway.  Executions, starvation, cruelty, and tropical diseases resulting from a lack of sanitation and health care took the lives of more than 100,000 people--mostly Asians along with Americans, Australians, Dutch, and some 16,000 British soldiers.