Australia’s Governor-General Quentin Bryce will lead an Anzac Day dawn service at Hellfire Pass, the site of the infamous Thai-Burma railway.

In attendance will be former Australian prisoners of war, now in their 80s, will be returning to where 12,400 fellow PoWs, including about 2800 Australians, lost their lives during construction of the so-called Death Railway link between Thailand and Burma for Japan’s Imperial Army during World War II.

Preparing to be at the ceremony on Anzac Day, Tom Uren is preparing to make his final trek to hellfire Pass. Given that he turns 90 next month, Mr. Uren thinks this will be his last visit to Hellfire Pass. A former federal Labor minister and one of the 623 surviving prisoners of war of the Japanese, he will make his fourth visit to the site of the notorious railway.

He and three other survivors will fly with the Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, to Thailand for Monday’s dawn service.

Quentin Bryce to lead Thai Anzac service

Mr Uren will represent all those from NSW who suffered and died at Hellfire Pass, the construction of which began 68 years ago. With him will be Lex Arthurson from Port Pirie, South Australia, Cyril Gilbert from Brisbane, and Bill Schmitt, also from South Australia. After the dawn service they will meet a contingent of fellow prisoners of war from Western Australia.

Mr Uren was captured by the Japanese in Timor in 1942 and after nine months in Koepang, a stint in Java and then a brief period in Singapore he was sent north to build the railway. He bore witness to the brutality and disease that killed 2650 of the 13,000 Australians who worked in the project. He suffered from amoebic dysentery.

After the railway was built he was shipped to Japan to work in a copper smelting plant. He suffered malnutrition, contracted the tropical disease beriberi and, in August 1945, witnessed the atomic bomb being dropped on Nagasaki, which is 80 kilometres away.

Mr Uren first returned with Edward ”Weary” Dunlop in 1987, under whom he served while a prisoner. He went back again in 1998 as part of a delegation of veterans accompanying the prime minster John Howard. He last returned in 2005 when he took the train to Ban Pong along the railway, ”just to see it”.

”I didn’t ever think I would go back again,” he said yesterday. ”I’m 90 next month. This time will be my last.”

Mr Uren returned from the war in 1945 and entered Parliament in 1958. He retired in 1990 and maintains a keen interest in politics.

Up to 800 people are set to attend the dawn service on Monday at the Konyu Cutting, which became known as Hellfire Pass after the fires lit by PoWs during the railway construction gave the appearance of the gates to hell.

Later, Ms Bryce will join former PoWS and their families together with ambassadors and diplomats in laying wreaths at the Kanchanaburi town’s war cemetery, close to the River Kwai.