War and Peace Memorial Park, Cijin
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A cluster of memorial monuments and a small themed museum, located on Cijin Island in Kaohsiung. It’s related to Taiwanese soldiers in the service of Japan in WWII and fighting in the Chinese Civil War on the mainland, and also about Allied POWs the Japanese took to camps in Taiwan on what became known as “Hell Ships”.
More background info: for general background see the separate chapter History of Taiwan and also under Japan.
After Japan had entered WWII, at a time when Taiwan was still a Japanese colony, several thousand Taiwanese volunteered to serve in the Japanese military beginning in 1942. Later, as the Japanese war effort began faltering and manpower was running short, yet more Taiwanese were recruited, enticed or tricked into service – towards the end of the war, even conscription was introduced but made no difference to the outcome of the war for Japan. In total just over 200,000 Taiwanese took part in Japan’s war effort. In addition, the Japanese also forced Taiwanese women into becoming “comfort women”, i.e. sex slaves for the Japanese military.
Those returning home from the war were then largely forgotten and received no compensation. At least not until the late 1980s when the Japanese Diet passed a bill allocating the remaining veterans then still alive 2 million yen each (ca. 12,000 USD in today’s money).
After WWII, the Chinese Civil War broke out between the Nationalist KMT and the Chinese Communists, and again Taiwanese were recruited to take part, others were captured by Communist forces and integrated into the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and then went on to participate in the Korean War.
These stories and the memorial park on Cijin are not very well known. I happened upon the existence of this park by chance when reading the website of the Taiwanese POW Camps Memorial Society – see under Kinkaseki! That’s because this society initiated the installation of a memorial monument dedicated to the Allied/Commonwealth POWs that the Japanese shipped to Taiwan for forced labour on the “Hell Ships”. Survivors said the conditions on these old, overloaded ships with starvation rations and rampant diseases were even worse than those in the camps – and that’s saying something!
The location of today’s memorial park is right next to the site of a former mass grave of some 350 POWs who were on board the (unmarked) Hell Ship Enoura Maru and perished when this vessel was bombed by the US Air Force in January 1945 (the bodies from the mass grave were later reinterred at the Punchbowl cemetery in Hawaii).
The memorial park was first inaugurated in 2006. The museum in the park opened in May 2009. In 2011 an additional section about the “Hell Ships” was added to the museum exhibition. Only a year later coastal erosion threatened the park so it had to close. The park then underwent renovation and some of the monuments were relocated to safer places within the park. It reopened in its present form in November 2014.
What there is to see: When you get to the site you have to cross a semi-circular square, and ascend a few steps. (Wheelchair access is possible via the car park to the south of the compound.) To the right stands a monument with the silhouette of what I believe is supposed to be a Peace Dove on it, though this is in black, not white, and a rather plump shape.
Dotted around on the lawn of the park are several individual stone monuments. The inscriptions on most of them are in Chinese only, so I couldn’t tell to what or whom they were dedicated. Except for the Hell Ship Memorial, which has a bilingual information panel in Chinese and English and the shape of one of the “Hell Ships” etched on to another plaque of green marble together with its general dedication. Both are now mounted on to a wall of grey bricks. Next to this stands one of those stelae with the inscription “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in four languages on the sides – a feature common at memorial sites the world over. This peace message is a noble wish, but just about as realistic as the “never again” cliché also associated with many memorial sites. The hundreds of further wars and atrocities since WWII make such statements ring rather hollow …
In the northernmost corner of the park stands the small museum. The wall facing the park features a mosaic depicting three Taiwanese soldiers, one wearing a Japanese Army uniform, one dressed in the uniform of the KMT forces and the third wearing the uniform of the PLA.
Inside is an exhibition subdivided into different subsections. At the entrance you’re greeted by a banner of the Taiwanese Veterans Association. There follows an intro section before moving on to the start of the recruitment of Taiwanese into the Japanese military. The different categories of service are explained and a number of personal stories are highlighted.
Main panels and some labels are bilingual or even trilingual, and the English translations are largely OK (if a bit flowery at times). But not all objects on display have English labels. Nor does the timeline on one of the walls.
Artefacts include personal belongings of veterans, documents, model planes, uniform parts and hats and suchlike. There’s a bronze bust of Khou Chiau-eng, who was the former president of the Taiwan Expat Veterans Association and was also active in the Independence Movement. According to the museum, he self-immolated in May 2008 in protest against what he saw as a neglectful attitude towards Taiwanese veterans on the part of the government.
There are also sections about non-military service for Japan in WWII, the POW “Hell Ships” and the Chinese Civil War, and there’s also a section about comfort women (see above).
All in all, I found my excursion to this off-the-beaten-track place worth it, but for others this may be a bit too specialized. You have to judge for yourself if your special interest in this subject matter is sufficient to justify the detour. I found the museum quite illuminating in parts (less so in others) and of the monuments, it was only the Hell Ships Monument that spoke to me, while the others all remained a mystery.
Location: roughly in the centre of Cijin Island on the ocean-facing side, just under 2 miles (3 km) south-east of Cihou and the main ferry to mainland Kaohsiung.
Google Maps locator: [22.5911, 120.2829]
Access and costs: somewhat off the beaten track, but reachable by bus; free.
Details: To reach the memorial park you first have to get from mainland Kaohsiung to Cijin Island. From the bus stop near the Cihou ferry terminal take bus line R9A for 14 stops to get out at Qujin Hospital. Continue on foot, then turn right and pass the hospital, then cross the main road towards the Windmill Park (where there are public conveniences) and proceed north to the memorial park on your left. For the way back you can catch the bus from right opposite the memorial site by Shanban Park (the bus goes a circular route).
Alternatively you can also get to the memorial park without using the ferry (e.g. if you get seasick easily). For that option first take the metro (red line) to Caoya Station, take exit 3 or 4 and walk a bit north to the Mingzheng Elementary School bus stop for the R9A Cijin Main Line bus. Stay on this bus for 19 stops (it’s a 25-minute ride), until it goes through the tunnel and up Cijin; get out on Cijin 3rd Road, just past the flashy government building, at Shanban Park.
The memorial park as such is freely accessible at all times. The museum has these opening times: Tuesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Mondays.
Admission is free.
Time required: ca. half an hour at the site, possibly longer if you want to read absolutely everything there is at the museum. Getting there and back eats up more time than I needed at the site …
Combinations with other dark destinations: see under Taiwan in general and under Cijin and Kaohsiung in particular.
Geographically quite apart, but partially related thematically, namely to the plight of Allied POWs used as slave labourers, is the memorial at the former Kinkaseki POW Camp in the north of Taiwan in Jinguashi (cf. Gold Museum).
