News-Info-Alerts

Re: The Unknown History

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: November 14, 2002

"Former POWs return to Taiwan for service

Byline:Cecilia Fanchiang

        "A War Story" is a docudrama that tells the story of a Canadian doctor, Major Ben Wheeler, and his time in a Taiwan prisoner-of-war camp after being captured by the Japanese during World War II. In Nazi POW camps, 5 percent of prisoners were killed or died in captivity. That figure jumps to 25 percent in Far East POW camps. Wheeler did his best to assist his fellow soldiers interned in Taiwan as they fought disease, starvation and torture.

        The film was screened at a Nov. 15 memorial service held at Taipei's American Club in China. Related services were held on the site of what was once the Kinkaseki POW Camp in the village of Chinguashi in Taipei County. To many former allied guests of the Japanese, the memories remain clear. To most ROC citizens, however, the period remains an unknown part of their own history.

        Members of Taiwan's expatriate community hold a remembrance service each year to honor the men who were caged on the island during the war. This year the Australian Commerce and Industry Office cooperated with the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society to host the Nov. 15-17 event.

        "Each year in November, at the 11th hour of the 11th day, people from all the allied nations take a moment to remember the sacrifices of the men and women who went to war, and suffered and died for the freedom that we enjoy today," said Michael Hurst, director of the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society and the founder of the Kinkaseki Memorial Committee.

        The memorial society is a private organization that conducts historical and archeological research into the Japanese POW camps in Taiwan. Members of the society have found the remains of other camps, and they continue to search for more. They have also been trying to locate survivors of the camps, and over 200 have so far been found. The group, whose membership is made up of British, Canadian, U.S., New Zealand and Australian expatriates in Taiwan, also provides information to local research and cultural groups.

        The society hosts the memorial service each year with the assistance of a local de facto embassy of one of the allied or Commonwealth countries, which is chosen on a rotating basis. The services began in 1997 when a memorial was erected in Chinguashi on the site of the old POW camp.

        Every year, former POWs and their families return to Taiwan for remembrance services. Jack Edwards, who authored a book that gives a gripping account of life in the Kinkaseki camp, was among the former POWs who returned to Taiwan to attend the service this year.

        Edwards's "Banzai, You Bastards" tells of his capture in Singapore in 1942 and the inhuman treatment he and his fellow prisoners endured as prisoners in Taiwan for over three years. According to Edwards, writing the book was not easy. "I was so traumatized by the experience that every time I sat and tried, the memories would cause such intense emotions that I was unable to continue," he said.

        "I will never forget the ordeal I suffered and the way in which my comrades were abused and died here," said Edwards. "We had limited food and clothes, we were overworked in the copper mine, and had to bear the terrible temper of those soldiers who could punish or abuse us physically as they wished; we were slaves instead of POWs," he explained.

        The book has been translated into Japanese and simplified Chinese characters. "I really want my Taiwanese friends to know about the history and to be aware of the truth about what happened in Taiwan during the war," said the veteran.

        The memorial society maintains a Web site, www.powtaiwan.org, to help locate other survivors of the camps so they can tell their stories, find out what happened to their old comrades or just know that their wartime ordeal has not been forgotten."