n 1995/96 the federal Labor government allocated $1.6 million for the construction of the memorial museum. The project had bipartisan support and the Liberal Prime Minister John Howard continued to support it when he became prime minister in 1996.
The building of any museum raises complex issues of interpretation, particularly if the history it displays is ‘difficult’. In Australia some ex-prisoners of war feared that the memorial museum might play down the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese or might suggest that their work on the railway had contributed to the Japanese war effort.
The Thai government preferred that the memorial museum promote reconciliation rather than dwell on the circumstances of the Japanese occupation some fifty years earlier.
The memorial museum presents the history of the Thai–Burma railway under chronological and thematic headings, explaining the rationale for the railway, the way in which it was constructed and the hardship experienced by those who worked on it.
At first the content was criticised for being too Australian since much of the visual and textual material it presented was drawn from Australian prisoners of war. However, all the text has now been translated into Thai and the story of the Asian workers (rōmusha) is also included.