Japanese dog tags

[Rod]

Hi Chris,

I hope you keep sharing these as you find them. Amazing to see the variation between different tags belonging to the same unit, and a rare opportunity for me at least.



My favourite! This one has the 'bango' 5804 for the 5th Railway Regiment and the 'mojifu' 森 for the Burma Area Army. I hadn't seen that combination before. The Railway Regiments, as far as I'm aware were directly under the Southern Expeditionary Army. Very cool! (I'm getting nerdy about the history)








A little history: (From the Japanese Monograph series)
November 1942, Thai-Burma Railroad construction: transport by sea became too dangerous so it was decided to start construction on the Thai-Burma Railroad. Planning had begun in June 1942 and completion was scheduled for the end of 1943. It was anticipated that difficult terrain and illness due to unhealthy conditions and disease would make construction difficult.

February 24, 1943: Southern Railway Unit: Created to facilitate railway construction. Formed from the 2nd Railway Inspectorate and the 5th and 9th Railway Regiments the Southern Railway Unit was established under the Southern Expeditionary Army.
Construction on the Thai-Burma Railway became very difficult; conditions were bad and disease rampant amongst the workers. Because of the necessity of supplying Burma, the Central Authority cut the completion date to end of August, four months earlier than originally planned.

Southern Railway Unit 威 (under the Southern Expeditionary Army)
(2nd Railway Inspectorate 威5801, new headquarters unit?)
5th Railway Regiment 森5804 (on tag 'Burma Area Army' mojifu [kanji])
9th Railway Regiment 威5805
1st Railway Materials Depot 威5806

Rod

[Chris PC Hodgson]

Thanks for your comments Nick but I haven't worked out how to properly rotate the pics on the edit feature of my iPad as there doesn't seem to be a rotate feature. I will try and rotate them vertically perhaps you would kindly look again once I have accomplished that.
Veiled danke
Chris

[Chris PC Hodgson]

Thanks Rod I was unable to post them vertically on the thread so I will try again to keep Nick happy and gain some more input.
Thanks Rod

[Chris PC Hodgson]

Rod
A few of the prisoners at Khao Din were captured in Java and worked on the Burma side of the railway, upon completion they were transferred to Kanchanaburi together with their guard force I.e. 5th Railway Regiment. My Jave roll now consists of about 60 guys so far and I have found pow tags with officers and other men who were transferred from the Thailand end of the line to Khao Din or Kaorin as they called it.
Thanks again
Nick, rod has kindly rotated the pics on his pc perhaps you gain glean further info from them now in this position. Unfortunately working in the field I only use iPad until I can transfer data into the TBRC database.
Many thanks
Chris

[Chris PC Hodgson]

Will do Phil I will open a separate thread for Khao Din Japanese Pow camp