ARTICLES & STORIES

TRIP TO KINKASEKI - TAIWAN - NOVEMBER 2009

by Peter Bowkett IN MEMORY OF HAROLD VINCENT BOWKETT

Cpl. Harold V. Bowkett, 9/11th Indian Division Signals -  standing back row, second from left. Taken in England just before the war. 

   I suspect the earliest part of planning for this trip actually must have started when I was a young boy - seven or eight years of age - at home in Clydach as I recall one day asking Dad why he had scars on his back and he told me that they were from working in the copper mine whilst he was at...

MEMORIAL FOR L/BDR. GEORGE HARRISON, GNR. ALFRED FOSTER AND 5TH FIELD REG’T. MEN IN THE UK

     L/Bdr. George Harrison, a medical orderly attached to the 5th Field Reg’t. Royal Artillery, was truly one of the heroes of the Kinkaseki and Kukutsu POW Camps. Working alongside the doctors and the other orderlies in the camp, and also as the only medic down the mine at Kinkaseki, he helped save the lives of many of the men who otherwise might have died from accidents, unattended injuries or disease.

     Following our first meeting at the big Kinkaseki POW reunion in the UK in 1999 we became close friends and kept...

JAPAN UNDER THE ABE REGIME

JAPAN'S DEMOCRACY IS DYING UNDER THE ABE REGIME! Democracy took root in Japan 75 years ago after the end of World War II. Who would have thought that someone could overturn it so easily? But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has done just that !

READ THE ARTICLES AND REPORTS BELOW TO SEE HOW THIS HAS COME ABOUT AND PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH YOUR FRIENDS . . .

Japan’s Democracy at Risk – The LDP’s Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change

An article by Lawrence Repeta in the Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus - July 22,...

AT LAST - A LOOK AT THE WAR CRIMINALS' MEMORIALS

     Over the past number of years many articles have been written about the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and of Japanese prime ministers visits to honour Japan's war dead and particularly the 14 Class A war criminals enshrined there as 'gods'. These visits have caused much controversy and also angered the governments and the people of China and Korea particularly, due to the enormous atrocities that those war criminals and their armies carried out in their countries - and all across Asia, in WWII.

     The only photos I have ever seen of the...

HIROHITO’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE END OF WORLD WAR II

FEBRUARY 14TH 1945 - THE DAY THE WAR IN ASIA COULD HAVE ENDED!

World War II could have ended in February 1945 – even before the Germans surrendered in May – read on……

     DID YOU KNOW? - February 14, 2015 is the seventieth anniversary of the day that the senior Japanese statesman Prince Konoe Fumimaro presented a report to Hirohito in which he told the emperor that after a continuous string of defeats the war was irrevocably lost and that he should surrender unconditionally immediately.

     Hirohito’s fateful negative response was that they...

ANOTHER VALID REASON FOR DROPPING THE ATOMIC BOMBS. . .

     In August 2014 I received an email with a story about a B-29 bomber crew on a mission to mine the waters off Kyushu Island Japan and who were forced to bail out after their plane was hit by flak. The men landed in the countryside and here is the account of one of those men, Sgt. Clarence L. Pressgrove – the last surviving member of the crew.

     “I hit the ground running so I wouldn’t break my legs. I drew my chute in and hid it...

A FAMILY CONNECTION

     Many times over the years as I have worked on this wonderful Taiwan POW project, people have asked if I had any family connections to the Far East POWs, if I had any relatives who were prisoners of war, and why I was doing so much to try to tell their story. I always replied that I did not have any relatives who were Far East POWs, and that all my relatives were involved in the war in Europe - as most of the Canadian servicemen were.

     The reason...

ASIAN WAR GRAVES AND MEMORIAL PHOTOS AVAILABLE - FREE!

     In 2011 it was announced on the Taiwan POW Society website that photos of the graves of the former Taiwan POWs who are buried at Sai Wan War Cemetery in Hong Kong were available from the Society - FREE of CHARGE. At the same time it was mentioned that photos of other war graves in the cemeteries in Hong Kong were available from Tony Banham, and that the Thai-Burma Railway Centre (TBRC) in Thailand would also pass on photos from the cemeteries at Kanchanaburi and Chungkai in Thailand and Thanbyuzayat, Burma - all...