The Taiwan Prisoner of War Camps Memorial Society announced yesterday that this year’s Remembrance Weekend banquet and memorial service will be held on Nov. 14 and Nov. 15. The weekend commemorates prisoners of war (POW) who lost their lives at the hands of their Japanese captors in Taiwan during World War II.
From August 1942 to September 1945, more than 4,300 Allied POWs were held by the Japanese at 16 camps in Taiwan. More than 10 percent of them died.
FORMER POWS
Michael Hurst, director of the society, said 22 overseas guests would participate in this year’s event. Among them, six are former POWs who spent time in Taiwan in various camps such as Taipei, Jinguashih (金瓜石), Sindian (新店) and Baihe (白河).
Jinguashih was home to the infamous Kinkaseki “Hell Camp,” opened in November 1942 and operational until the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Army in Taiwan in August 1945.
The POWs were subjected to inhumane treatment, denied the most basic of medical facilities and flogged by their jailers — some of them Taiwanese. Many prisoners were, quite literally, worked to death.
The Kinkaseki/Taiwan Prisoner of War Memorial at Jinguashih, Taipei County, was completed in 1997. A Remembrance Weekend has been held at the site of the former POW camp every year since then. For the past 12 years, former POWs and their family members have returned to Taiwan to take part in the event.
The event is co-sponsored by the society and one of the four Commonwealth Representative Offices in Taipei. This year, the British Trade and Cultural Office in Taipei is sharing responsibility with the society for the event.
Hurst said everyone was welcome to join them for the special occasion.
REMEMBER
“We hope that many will come out to remember and honor these men, to whom we owe a debt that can never be repaid,” Hurst said.
The event consists of a banquet and a Remembrance Day Service. The banquet is being held at the Imperial Hotel on the evening of Nov. 14.
The service is to be held on Nov. 15 in honor of the POWs and provides an opportunity for people to meet and talk with them, as well as listen to their stories. People wishing to attend must make reservations for the two events.
Buses have been chartered to take participants to the service at the former Kinkaseki POW Camp in Jinguashih.
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