KHWAE NOI RIVER

also called Kwai River, Thai Mae Nam Khwae Noi tributary of the Mae Klong River, flowing wholly in western Thailand. It rises near Three Pagodas Pass (Phra Chedi Sam Ong) on the mountainous Myanmar-Thailand border and runs southeast, parallel to the border, to its confluence near Kanchanaburi town with the Mae Klong, which itself empties into the Gulf of Thailand at Samut Songkhram. Internationally the river is remembered for a bridge that was built across it by Allied forced labour during World War II. The Japanese, seeking a railway link from Bangkok to Moulmein, Burma (Myanmar), laid track along the Khwae Noi valley to Three Pagodas Pass; thousands of British and other Allied prisoners of war died building the railway and the bridge. They are commemorated in a cemetery in Kanchanaburi town and in Pierre Boulle's novel The Bridge on the River Kwai (1952) and the motion picture of the same name (1957). The region has become a major tourist and resort area. Most of the railway, though, was dismantled after the war.