Heito Camp - or Taiwan POW Camp #3, as it was called, was formerly a site that housed local construction workers. It was emptied and made into a POW camp in the summer of 1942, and the first allied prisoners of war arrived in early August.
Its first occupants were 26 civilian seamen off the Dutch tanker MV Genota who were brought to Heito on August 2 following the seizure of their ship by the Japanese Navy in the Indian Ocean. The second group was a large contingent of British and Allied POWs who arrived in Taiwan in late August. In this group were the top-ranking allied officers from Singapore and the Dutch East Indies - Lieut. Generals Percival and Heath, Major General Callaghan of the Australian Imperial Forces from Singapore, and Lieut. General H. ter Poorton from the Dutch East Indies. There were many brigadiers and colonels as well as their batmen in this group, and after about a week at Heito, all the senior officers were moved out to join their American counterparts - Lieut. General Jonathan Wainwright, Major Generals King and Moore and other high-ranking officers who had come to Taiwan earlier from the Philippines, at Karenko Camp. The majority of the enlisted men remained at Heito.
Life at Heito Camp was very hard for the POWs - most of whom were just in their early twenties. The main slave labour task in this camp was to pick rocks and stones from a vast area of an old dried river-bottom near the camp so that the land could be made ready to plant sugar cane. It was back-breaking work with the POWs working from early morning to late afternoon in the blazing hot tropical sun, clad only in shorts or loin-cloths. The rocks and stones were picked by hand using woven bamboo baskets. The baskets were then carried to one of the nearby railroad sidings and emptied into railroad hopper cars. There were few rest breaks and the POWs had their quota of cars to fill in a day. If that quota was not met, beatings would follow at the end of the shift.
Disease was rife at Heito - particularly malaria, because of the huge swamp that lay just to the north of the camp. It harbored millions of mosquitoes which spread the disease rapidly among the POWs. Prisoners suffered from sunburn and sunstroke, malnutrition, beri-beri, and dysentery - and no medicine was provided to help alleviate their suffering. Many of the POWs died and were buried in the camp cemetery a few kilometers from the camp.
The Camp Commandant, 1st Lieut. Tamaki was vicious and sadistic, and cared little for the welfare of the prisoners. Very early in their internment he boasted at one of the roll calls that he would "fill the camp cemetery", and he did - and started another adjacent to it when that one was full. Altogether 132 men died at Heito Camp - the highest in-camp death rate of all the Taiwan POW camps.
In addition to working in the fields, some of the men worked at the nearby sugar factory in the town of Heito (Pingtung). There were various tasks to perform - gathering the cane in the nearby fields, unloading the rail cars laden with cane that came into the factory, stoking the furnaces and working on the machines to process the sugar. They worked shifts and were away from the camp for up to 12 or more hours a day.
There were several contingents of men who were sent from Heito to the camp at Kinkaseki - to replenish the supply of men too sick or weak to work in the mine any longer. There were also groups sent to Heito from Kinkaseki and Taichu Camp, as well as many POWs who passed through on their way to other camps, or who stayed there temporarily on their way to Japan. Late in the war the camp received men who had been picked up by the Japanese after the hellship on which they had been sailing, bound for Japan, was torpedoed by Allied submarines.
Heito Camp was bombed by the Americans on February 7th 1945 killing twenty-eight POWs, several of the guards, and injuring a further 80 POWs. The casualty figure would have been much higher but many of the POWs were away from the camp working at the sugar factory when the attack took place. The Japanese provided no medical assistance to the wounded POWs and this resulted in several more deaths.
Following the raid, the camp was closed and on March 11th the POWs were moved to Shirakawa, Toroku and Taihoku Camp # 6, where most of them finished out the war. Some were forced to go into the hills near Taihoku to build another camp called the Oka Camp. Conditions were so bad in this camp that 19 men died.
Heito was one of the main camps on the island and it is estimated that more than 1,100 POWs either stayed there or passed through the camp from the summer of 1942 to early in 1945.
In 2004 the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society erected a memorial to the former Heito prisoners of war and several of the men who were former POWs in the camp and their families returned to Taiwan for the dedication. it was located in a small garden just outside the main gate of the Ai-Liao Military Base.
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In 2023, following the relocation of the memorial inside the new Pingtung County Animal Rescue Centre, the memorial stone was placed in a permanent cement base next to the exhibition hall which tells the story of the former Heito POW Camp and Ai-Liao Military base. It will stand there forever in honour and memory of the men of Heito Camp.
The new Heito POW Camp Memorial The exhibition hall tells the story of the former Heito POW Camp and Ai-Liao military base.