World Notes THAILAND

Jungle vines long ago began to reclaim the railway leading to the famous bridge on the River Kwai that the Japanese brutally built with Allied POWs and Asian laborers during World War II. Today the Burma-to-Thailand railway, whose bridge inspired a book and movie, is patronized mostly by Westerners visiting the graves of soldiers who worked on it. Hoping to tap such tourism, Thai entrepreneurs propose a $38.5 million reconstruction to turn the decaying area into an amusement park. Survivors of the bloody trail are not amused, however, and compare the idea to refurbishing Auschwitz as a Disneyland. The Japanese would also prefer to let River Kwai ghosts rest; they turned down Thai requests that they invest in the project.