Kinkaseki POW Camp Memorial
-
The main Taiwan POW Memorial in the country, at a site where there was one of the most notorious camps for Allied/Commonwealth POWs captured by imperial Japan during WWII and forced to perform slave labour in the local copper and gold mines. This story is less well known than that of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway, but if anything the suffering of the Kinkaseki POWs was even worse. Hence this is a significant memorial site – and there are specialist tours available.
More background info: for general background see the separate chapter History of Taiwan, and also cf. Death Railway and Gold Museum.
The dedicated website of The Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society has all the details you can hope for … and then some. I have no chance of competing with the wealth of information on that website, so if you want to know more, go there – or even get the book, a richly illustrated 620-page tome entitled “Never Forgotten”, which can only be ordered from the society directly (all external links, opening in new tabs).
For the purposes of this chapter, only a brief summary of the most salient aspects has to suffice:
After Japan entered WWII with their co-ordinated attacks on Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya, large numbers of captured Allied/Commonwealth POWs were deported and misused by the Japanese for forced labour – against all POW conventions, but Japan had never signed up to any of those.
The best known case of mainly US, British, Canadian and Australian POWs exploited for slave labour in Japan’s war effort is the Death Railway, which is commemorated by several memorial sites in Thailand, some of which are well visited (and well worth visiting).
But such POWs were also taken to Taiwan, which at the time was a colony of Japan, of course. There were over a dozen POW camps all over the island, but Kinkaseki, established in late 1942, was one of the largest and deadliest. In total, some 1100 POWs are believed to have been in or passed through the Kinkaseki camp. Out of the hundreds of POWs who lost their lives in Taiwan, the largest death toll was recorded at Kinkaseki. But the will to survive was also strong. The POW Memorial Society (see above) has records of the memories of countless former POWs who lived to tell their tale.
At Kinkaseki the POWs had to to do the hardest and most dangerous work deep in the copper mine shafts where regular miners refused to go. Temperatures in the dark tunnels often exceeded 40 degrees Celsius. The prisoners had to fulfil quotas and if they failed to do so they were lined up by their Japanese tormentors and beaten as punishment. At the same time they were housed in the simplest of overcrowded barracks at the camp where they had to survive on starvation rations and hence soon turned into emaciated walking skeletons. Diseases like diphtheria and dysentery were rife. Medical provision was minimal and medicines were often withheld by the Japanese.
The mines at Kinkaseki (the Japanese name for Jinguashi – see Gold Museum) were closed in March 1945 as Japan was losing the war and shipping convoys could no longer get through to Japan from Taiwan to deliver the ore. There were also US air raids on the mines causing some damage. Apparently there had been a “contingency plan” in the event of an American landing in Taiwan. This would have meant the murder of all surviving POWs, namely by putting them in a specially dug tunnel, killing them and sealing the tunnel in order to leave no trace of the war crimes committed (documents regarding this plan were later discovered in the research of Japanese wartime atrocities). But luckily some of the prisoners were forewarned, no American invasion came and such murderous plans were not carried through. The inmates of the camp were instead then transferred to another camp further inland near Taipei. There they languished for several more months until the end of the war. The survivors were then mostly sent home.
Their plight and the existence of the Taiwanese POW camps were largely forgotten over the following decades. It wasn’t until the 1990s that recognition and commemoration began. The Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society was founded in 1997 and has since then toiled tirelessly to compile a list of the names of the POWs and collect testimonies from ex-POWs still alive. The society is also behind the creation of several memorial sites at the camps’ locations (and beyond – see e.g. here). The Kinkaseki site became the official Taiwan POWs Camp Memorial and is the most elaborate.
The society’s main founder member and its key researcher is Canadian expat Michael Hurst, who has lived in Taiwan for decades. He’s a historian and not only the author of the society’s voluminous book about the POWs in Taiwan and runs their website, he also offers specialist tours of Kinkaseki and other associated sites.
In fact I had been in touch with him when I planned my trip to Taiwan for December 2023/January 2024. We even had a date for our tour arranged, but then he had to return to Canada for family reasons and had to cancel. However, he gave me detailed instructions how to do it without him, and the driver/guide I hired for the final part of my Taiwan trip (see under Gold Museum) assisted in getting Kinkaseki included in our touring.
Obviously, doing a tour with Michael/the POW Memorial Society would have included lots more in terms of information, but I had to make do with what the site offered in itself and with reading up background info from the society’s website. Below is my brief report of my visit:
What there is to see: First you have to track down the memorial site, which is a little tricky, but with the help of satellite navigation on the part of my driver/guide we found our way.
The memorial consists of different components. There’s the original first monument erected in 1997, consisting of a short obelisk with a plaque. Two information panels flank this. Another monument is called “Eternal Flame of Peace”, with the “flame” being a small metal sculpture atop a conical mound.
The main element is a large wall of names, 56 feet (17m) long and ca. 7 feet (over 2m) high – listing every single name of the POWs the Japanese held in Taiwan, together with their military rank and country of origin.
In front of the wall a bronze sculpture was added (unveiled in 2011) that is entitled “Mates” and depicts two emaciated POWs, dressed only in loincloths/shorts, with one holding the shoulder of the other. This is to symbolize how crucial for survival it was to have formed friendships within the POW camps.
In addition there’s a Taiwan Prisoner of War Memorial Tree – a maple, because that’s a type of tree that grows in all the POWs’ countries of origin. A “sister tree” is said to stand in the National Memorial Arboretum in Great Britain.
The camp was almost completely destroyed after the war – only one element of the original structures survives to this day: part of the camp’s gate. A plaque on it points this out. Another plaque nearby sports an annotated drawing of a map of the camp.
I visited this site after having been to the Gold Museum in Jinguashi. And while that was really busy with mostly domestic tourists, we had the POW Camp Memorial all to ourselves. This will be different when the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society holds their annual remembrance events in mid-November.
Most visitors, in fact, will come here because of a family connection, but it’s also a worthwhile addition to a dark-tourism-focused independent tour of the region. Those who want more, however, should get in touch with the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society (external link, opens in a new tab).
You can also try and locate the site of the mine where the POWs had to work – see under Gold Museum.
Location: right in Jinguashi (see Gold Museum) not far from Qitang Old Street, in north-eastern Taiwan.
Google Maps locator: [25.1109, 121.8584]
Access and costs: a bit hidden, but not too tricky to find with the help of GPS; free (as such, but organized tours obviously incur costs).
Details: I visited the site as part of a longer all-day tour from Taipei with a local driver/guide as an add-on to our visit to the Jinguashi Gold Museum (see also Suwang-dong). On the way there our guide, using his smartphone for navigation, first took us down the winding Jinshui Road and we entered the site from a bus parking lot to the west of the memorial. On our way back, however, we exited to the east and then used the stairways and narrow lanes of Qitang Old Street and other labyrinthine parts of old Jinguashi.
If you make your way to Jinguashi independently (see Gold Museum) you’ll have to enter the Google Maps locator into your navigation device and hope it’ll guide you to the site. I don’t have any detailed walking directions.
The memorial site is freely accessible at all times.
If you want an in-depth visit with a full historian’s narration enhancing the visit, then get in touch with the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society (external link, opens in a new tab) who can arrange guided tours with all practicalities taken care of. When I enquired about such a tour I was given a price estimate of 3500 to 4000 NTD for two participants by Michael Hurst, the founder of the society who also runs these tours. I would have gone on that tour with him, and for that price (which I find quite reasonable), but then Michael had to cancel because he was going back to Canada to see family. I’d recommend enquiring well in advance! Being a bit flexible should also help.
Time required: as a normal visitor, without any family connection to the POWs, a few moments will suffice – I spent only a good ten minutes at the site; others will take longer for reflection/remembrance. And if you go on a tour organized by the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society (see above), your stay is bound to be significantly longer by way of the guide’s narration.
Combinations with other dark destinations: the nearby Jinguashi Gold Museum has a section about the POW camp and the inmates’ plight, so is a natural and almost obligatory combination (and usually included in the organized tours).
For more see under Taiwan in general.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Gold Museum and also Taiwan in general.
