When I completed my draft of Across the Three Pagodas Pass I felt there was something missing from it. My account was mainly restricted to my own experiences on Thai-side and there was not enough about what lay beyond the Three Pagodas Pass in Burma. Again, my knowledge of the Allied Forces’ administration of the railway was limited to hearsay only. I regret this, and feel there is no excuse for it.

Records about the railway are scarce and I used much unofficial data, using articles in foreign magazines to aid my efforts. If you find errors and inaccuracies please be so kind as not to hesitate to point them out, do not hesitate to correct or to amend.

The quotations from the two ex-prisoners’ memoranda are abridged versions and are translated into Japanese as best I could from the English texts. I shall be glad if my little record enables people who had experience in the railway in those days to recall it, glad, too, if those who knew nothing about a railway we left in a corner of south-east Asia take an interest in such historical facts.

So I close, and first express my thanks for the kindness of several people from whom I received data and photographs and have been allowed to quote from their works. Especially I have the honour to salute the former prisoners-of-war, Geoffrey Adams and Jim Bradley.