Thailand Guide
The central plains
The JEATH War Museum
Opening time: Daily 8.30am–6pm
Price: B30
Address: Beside the Mae Khlong on Thanon Pak Praek, 5km south of the Bridge
Founded by the chief abbot of Wat Chaichumpon in 1977 and housed within the temple grounds in a reconstructed Allied POW hut of thatched palm, the ramshackle and unashamedly low-tech JEATH War Museum was the town's first public repository for the photographs and memories of the POWs who worked on the Death Railway. The name JEATH is an acronym of six of the countries involved in the railway: Japan, England, Australia, America, Thailand and Holland. The museum has since been surpassed by the slicker and more informative exhibitions at the Death Railway Museum and the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum and is now of most interest for its small collection of wartime photographs and for its archive of newspaper articles about and letters from former POWs who have revisited the River Kwai.