Andrew's Taiwan Adventure

From Andrew re: trip yesterday.

I went to an ex-Japanese POW site yesterday. The troups who suffered there were mainly Commonwealth. I heard the tour-guide, Michael, (a Canadian man who has devoted his time in Taiwan to restoring the POW camp for vistiors and keeping the history alive), speak at school 5 years ago and Kathryn went on the trip with her year 9's. Since then the mines have been opened up somewhat and there is more sign-posting and they have resroed an old Japanese 'headquarters' into a veteran's museum.

It is an overwhelming experience particularly when I think it all happened only 16 or so years before I was born. I don't think anyone who wasn't there could ever understand or appreciate what the young men went through. The heat, the jungle, the fact that the prisoners could have looked over the walls of the camp to see the normal life of the Japanese and Taiwanese villagers whilst they were shitting their guts out with dysentery and being beaten daily for not making the work quota. The old veteran guys in their 80's have come back to see it all. Some cope, some don't and won't speak. Having been there for myself, I am in no doubt that the POW's stories are reality.

Just a few stories we learned:

We went into a mine 50 metres out of 600. That was enough. It is incomprehensible how the troups survived, some for 3 years. The POW's worked in the copper mines which went to 130m below sea level and about 1.5km into the mountain. At that depth the coalface could reach up to 50 degrees celsius so the prisoners could only work for about 6 minutes before they had to go and roll in the ditch of cold drain water that would constantly seep out of the mountain so that they wouldn't pass out. At some points, the Japanese actually installed wooden bathtubs in there for the same purpose.

The prisoners were required to fill a 1 tonne cart of ore per man per day and this was a physically impossible task, even for a fit person, let alone someone with berri-berri, so they were beaten with either miner's pick handles/hammers, or the flat side of a bayonet on a daily basis.

A local man, well known to Michael, who delivered large quantities of fresh vegetables like cabbage everyday to the POW camp, was absolutely dumbstruck in 1997 to learn that so many of the prisoners were dying of starvation. He wasn't to know that the fresh produce was going directly to the Japanese kitchens and that the prisoners were only fed the equivalent of two flat tennis balls of rice everyday.

The Officers did not do the manual labour as the Japanese believed the Allied armies were like theirs, in that if you separated the Officers from the enlisted men the army became dysfunctional, therefore the Officers sat in the camp and slowly rotted but were able to plan and provide Xmas pantos and other entertainment for the troups.

Towards the close of the war, the Japanese realised that they had no chance of winning, and so most able-bodied Japanese men were put into overseas service so it was planned to replace the homeland worksforce with POW's. Many surviving POW's were then put in the hold of 'hell ships' which were nothing more than basic freighters. As the Japanese did not observe the Geneva conventions, their ships carried no special markings and so many were either bombed or torpedoed by the Allies - thousands of men died on route.

Some ships were belaid for up to 2 months with the POW soldiers shut in the hold to the point that it drove many of the men mad - some attempting to bite their mate's throat to attempt to drink his blood.

Prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs the Japanese high command issued a directive that all surviving POW's were to be eliminated in order to leave no trace. In Kinkaseki, I actually stood at the mouth of the 'death tunnel' - the Japanese built a shortcut tunnel to the mine supposedly to save the prisoners walking over the mountain, but instead it was sealed at the bottom by a steel door with the intention that the POW's would be marched into it, the opening then sealed with another steel door and the tunnel then blown up, thus erasing any trace of the men. Primary sources say that they have no doubts that had the atmoic bombs not been dropped on Japan that every single POW in Asia would have died.


One thing that Michael stresses is that unlike the European military war, the Pacific Theatre was fought along lines of pure racial differences. Japan was seen to be a model coloniser of Taiwan, which built the country and is therefore still highly regarded amongst the older people in Taiwan.

Kinkaseki was the most brutal of the Taiwan camps and 10% of the prisoners died there. But also, some of what Michael said made me think beyond what my mum's generation in Aus feel as 'filthy cruel Japanese.' They may have been bastards but very few were had for war crimes after 1945 because the US washed its hands of it, even taking chemical war secrets from the Japanese scientists in Manchuria. Some Japanese generals went on to senior posts in the Japanese government in the 50s.

World War I didn't bring anyone to its senses. World War II happened..it didn't stop Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan or Timor or Iraq.

Mum lived through the Second War, I wonder whether anyone in Australia at the time of the fall of Singapore was aware that Churchill branded the troups there 'cowards' for surrendering an island whose artillery pointed the wrong way out to sea. These were the men sent to Changhi and Taiwan who had seen their mates fall and then had to endure insufferable cruelty. They were incredibly brave men.

Just my thoughts.....I wonder whether its easier to go with the flow....why are we in Iraq?.... I can vote for it cos I'm now too old for the army so am safe.

Lots of thoughts!