More than a dozen people, including a former prisoner of war (POW) who was detained in Taiwan during World War II, POW families, foreign representatives and Taiwan POW Camp Memorial Society members gathered yesterday to inaugurate a newly completed memorial near the site of a former POW camp in Taipei in a ceremony filled with emotion.
During World War II, Japan built 16 POW camps across Taiwan, including camps in Taipei, New Taipei City (新北市), Yunlin County and Pingtung County, to imprison Allied soldiers they captured in Southeast Asia.
More than 4,000 Allied POWs were detained in Taiwan and about 10 percent of them died in the camps, according to the society’s findings.
Photo: CNA
For more than a decade, the society has been trying to locate all the former POW camp sites and erect a monument at each site to remember those who suffered and died.
The latest memorial was the one inaugurated on the site of a new Ministry of National Defense complex in Dazhi (大直), Taipei, which was Taihoku POW Camp No. 6 from 1942 to 1945.
Taiwan POW Camp Memorial Society director Micheal Hurst said the society discovered the site in 2000 after checking several different historic documents and had former POWs who were imprisoned there confirm it.
“Once I took a former POW who was detained here to this site, he looked around and said: ‘Yes, this is the place, the mountains in the back have not changed in 70 years,’” Hurst said, standing in front of the memorial.
The memorial is inscribed in both English and Chinese: “1942-1945, this memorial is dedicated to the memory of all the men who were interned by the Japanese during WWII in the Taihoku Prisoner of War Camp #6, formerly located near this site. We will remember them.”
Although 18 of the more than 700 former POWs who were imprisoned at Taihoku POW Camp No. 6 survive to this day, none were able to attend the ceremony.
Instead, the 91-year-old Ken Pett, a former soldier in the British Army’s 80th Anti-tank Regiment, who was imprisoned at camps in Jinguashih (金瓜石) in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳), as well as in Sindian District (新店), spoke on behalf of all the allied soldiers who were imprisoned in Taiwan.
“I came to this memorial as a representative of all my comrades, who suffered the hardships and some paid the ultimate price — never will we forget and never can we forget — but we can forgive in the future, that’s right, the future generation, they are not responsible for their elders’ crimes,” Pett said.
Jim Ferguson, son of former British officer George Ferguson, who was detained at the camp, read a poem titled Who Will Remember Them in memory of his father.
A tearful Jim Ferguson had to pause several times as he choked on his tears as he read the poem.
Hurst said the wet and windy weather during the ceremony, was appropriate for the dedication of the memorial.
“Exactly 69 years ago today, the first POWs marched into this camp, it was a rainy and cold day, just like today,” he said. “The POWs departed from Singapore, embarked in Keelung and marched here.”
The society is set to unveil a memorial park on the site of a former POW camp in Jinguashih at 10am tomorrow.
The memorial park includes a monument and a wall with names of the 4,350 allied troops who were imprisoned at the camp.
Members of the public interested in attending the ceremony can catch the Keelung Bus No. 1062 at Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT Station’s exit 1 in Taipei and get off at the stop in Jinguashih.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS