Led by a bagpiper, 50 people from foreign and local communities gathered yesterday to rededicate a memorial at the site of a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camp in Taipei County.
The memorial was erected in 1999 by the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society in memory of Allied prisoners interned at the Kukutsu camp in Hsintien by the Japanese during World War II. Yesterday's ceremony marked the relocation of the memorial's monument stone. It was moved because of construction in the area.
According to information provided by the society, the Kukustu camp housed around 300 POWs from May to August of 1945. Originally the prisoners were interned at the Kinkeseki camp in Chinguashi, where they were forced to work under brutal conditions in the nearby copper mine. However, Allied naval blockades prevented the Japanese from shipping the copper, causing them to shut down the mine and move the prisoners to other locations, including Kukutsu, said society director Michael Hurst.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Because they could see the end of the war looming, "the Japanese really didn't care if the men [in Kukutsu] lived or died. If they wanted shelter, they had to build their own huts. If they wanted to eat, they had to figure out how to get food," Hurst said.
"Although the men were only there for three months, many survivors told us that Kukutsu was the worst POW camp because of the starvation and beatings," he said.
Wang Tsai-ching (
"I was only seven years old when the POWs came. The POWs were really pitiful; they couldn't eat or walk without getting hit by the Japanese soldiers. The Japanese really looked down on the prisoners," Wang said.
"They were given almost nothing to eat. When they were given time to bathe, they would pretend to bathe in the creek nearby and beg the locals for food," he said.
The British Trade and Cultural Office representative at the ceremony, Deputy Director Rod Bunten, said that the memory of the POW camps in Taiwan held special significance in light of the recent outcry over abuse of Iraqi prisoners in US camps.
"The experience of the POWs in Taiwan should serve as a timely reminder that prisoner abuse has happened and will happen again," he said, adding that it is important to remember the past so that abuses will not happen in the future.
There were a total of 10 Japanese POW camps throughout Taiwan, holding mostly British, US and Dutch prisoners.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods