Back in the thick jungles of Sumatra during World War II, a railway was carved out to connect the west and east of the island. Known today as the Pekanbaru Death Railway, it stretched about 220 kilometers from Muaro in West Sumatra to Pekanbaru in Riau. Built by the Japanese army in 1943–1945, the line was meant to move coal and troops quickly across the island. But the story of this railway is less about trains and more about the people who built it.
Thousands of prisoners of war (mainly Dutch, British, Australian) and tens of thousands of Indonesian civilians, called romushas, were forced to work on the line. Workers hacked through jungle, swamps, and rivers with little more than hand tools. Food was scarce, often just a handful of rice, and disease spread quickly. Of the 6,500 POWs, about 30% did not survive. For the romushas, the losses were even greater, with estimates of 50–80% perishing during construction.
The railway was completed on August 15, 1945. Ironically, it was barely used, except to transport the exhausted workers away. Soon after, the jungle reclaimed much of the track. Today, only fragments remain: rusting locomotives, abandoned bridges, and overgrown embankments hidden in the forest.
