The Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society will host the 9th Far East Prisoner of War Day on Aug. 13, providing an opportunity to learn more about the Allied prisoners of war who were held in the 14 Japanese POW camps in Taiwan during World War II.
The program will feature an exhibition of military and prisoner-of-war artifacts from the Society’s museum collection and a short memorial tribute to the former prisoners.
The event will also feature a showing of The Great Raid, a film that tells the true story of the daring mission to rescue 500 POWs from the infamous Cabanatuan Camp in the Philippines in January 1945, and the 30-minute documentary he Veterans Remember (not suitable for children).
Photo courtesy of Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society
■ SPOT – Taipei Film House (台北之家－光點電影院), 18 Zhongshan N Rd Sec 2, Taipei (台北市中山北路二段18號)
■ Aug. 13 from 5:30pm. Admission is free, but space is limited and reservations are required by e-mail, society@powtaiwan.org, before Aug. 10
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
The entire Li Zhenxiu (李貞秀) saga has been an ugly, complicated mess. Born in China’s Hunan Province, she moved to work in Shenzhen, where she met her future Taiwanese husband. Most accounts have her arriving in Taiwan and marrying somewhere between 1993 and 1999. She built a successful career in Taiwan in the tech industry before founding her own company. She also served in high-ranking positions on various environmentally-focused tech associations. She says she was inspired by the founding of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in 2019 by Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), and began volunteering for the party soon after. Ko
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
RSS