A headstone with an inscription in English believed to date to World War II that recently went missing from a graveyard in Taipei has been retrieved and temporarily listed as a historical relic, the Taipei City Government said on Tuesday.
The headstone, discovered during a burial site relocation project in Xinyi District (信義), had been reported to police as missing by Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-pei (許家蓓).
Police tracked down the headstone and returned it to the site, where it was on Monday analyzed by experts from the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs.
Photo courtesy of Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-pei’s office
The department’s Cultural Heritage Division said that the headstone, which had been retrieved from an unidentified individual, was temporarily stored at a local police station.
The city government said that by temporarily listing the headstone as a historical relic, it would be possible to pursue legal action if it was taken again.
The headstone was discovered in March after the city government was to begin relocating 30 graves in hills near Fude Street on Jan. 28, as part of a road expansion project.
After the city government ordered the graves to be relocated by April 30, visitors discovered an inscription in English on one of the headstones thought to read either “Clack, Eric Arthur,” or “Clack, Erec Arthur,” indicating that the person passed away on Aug. 25, 1945.
Pictures of the headstone were on March 31 posted on the Facebook page of Taiwan Ancient Tomb Detectives, a group of local cemetery enthusiasts, alongside another two stones that were too badly weathered to make out names or dates of death.
Members of the group speculated that the headstones might date to World War II, with military historian Chang Wei-bin (張維斌) on Sunday saying that they could mark the graves of British soldiers who had been captured and sent to Taiwan, which was then a Japanese colony, as prisoners of war.
However, cultural heritage conservationist Hsiao Wen-chieh (蕭文杰) said that as cement was valuable during the war, it was unlikely to be used to make headstones for prisoners of war, unless they were Allied soldiers who died near the end of the war.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS