ARTICLES & STORIES

The DEATH OF A YOUNG SOLDIER IN A JAPANESE POW CAMP

     This is a story which I’m sure will touch your heart as it has mine so many times. It is an account of a young soldier in a Japanese POW camp in the last days of his life before his death.

     May it help to bring home to all of us – these many years later, what it was like in so many of the POW camps across the Far East from day to day during those 3 1/2 terrible years, and what it cost to give us the freedom we...

80 YEARS AGO . . . . . EVENTS IN TAIWAN POW HISTORY

2025 is the 80th Anniversary of the end of World War II, and we want to share with our readers a chronology of events that took place in 1945 relative to the Taiwan POWs, to help commemorate their suffering and sacrifice.

JANUARY

9th - As General Macarthur’s forces made the second major amphibious landing on the        Philippines in the Lingayen Gulf, aircraft from the US Navy carrier Hornet attacked Takao (Kaohsiung) Harbour. The hellship Enoura Maru - part of a convoy of ships that had left the Philippines on December 27th carrying mostly American POWs bound for Japan, was bombed...

A WORD ABOUT POW CAMP TOURS IN TAIWAN

From Michael Hurst  MBE, Director, Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society

     It is wonderful to see the increase in the number of visitors coming to Taiwan every year to take part in our POW remembrance programs and tours, and it is exciting to spend time with them ‘following in the footsteps’ of the former POWs. It is an honour and a privilege to be able to host our guests and guide them on tours to the various camps and areas of interest where the story of the Taiwan POWs unfolds.

    However, we have also found...

A CARING SAILOR and the “REST OF THE STORY”

     Many years ago, back when I first started my work of finding and contacting the former Taiwan POWs, Gnr. Ken Pett of the 80th Anti-Tank Reg’t. told me in a letter how that when he was evacuated from Keelung in September 1945 on the aircraft carrier USS Santee, one of the American sailors had given him a little blue Gideon’s New Testament to help and comfort him.

     He was so grateful for that act of kindness and had cherished the Testament all those years, and in gratitude and respect he wanted to...

THE SEPTEMBER 1944 HELLSHIPS

     Many people know about the Death Railway and the ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’, but fewer know what happened to the POWs who worked on the railway after its completion in October 1943. Following the linking of the rails at Konkoita Thailand, the bulk of the men were gathered up and moved back down the line to camps in Kanchanaburi and ChungKai. Here with a little better food, some rest and medical care, the men began to get well, and seeing this the Japanese decided that these men were fit enough to be sent...

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...

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,...

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...