It was the infamous railway built by Prisoners of War to supply Japanese forces during World War II - and October 16 marks 75 years since the completion of the Thai-Burma railway, which saw tens of thousands die during its construction.
Even now, those are never far from the thoughts of former Australian POWs, 99-year-old Colin Hamley and 98-year-old Norman Anderton.
"Well, all you did, you lived from one day to the next. The best you could say about them (the Japanese), was that they were a team of vindictive bastards," Mr Anderton told SBS News.
"And they took their spleen out on us."
Mr Anderton was wounded in action, just two days before Singapore fell to the advancing Japanese army, while Mr Hamley had served in the Middle East during the desert campaign against the Nazis before his journey back home took an unwelcome detour via Java.
"Instead of turning more southerly, we started to head in a northerly direction and we realized we weren’t coming home to Australia, we were going somewhere else. And we were landed in Java," he said.
The two young Diggers were soon captured by the Japanese Imperial Army, along with more than 60,000 Allied troops.
The Japanese also took more than 250,000 locals into captivity to be used as forced labour.
POWs and civilian forced labourers alike were forced to build the 415km railway connecting Thailand and Burma, allowing the occupying Japanese forces to bypass vulnerable sea routes.
