JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY – TRIP TO NORTH CHINA
By Michael Hurst MBE

At the Marco Polo Bridge outside Beijing

From September 16th to 27th I had the wonderful privilege of being invited to China to participate in a world conference on ‘Sino-Japanese Relations, Past and Future’. The conference was held in Beijing and sponsored for the most part by the Global Alliance for Preserving the Truth of History in World War II, a non-governmental organization consisting of several associations and groups that want to ensure that the truth about the Second World War and the atrocities committed by the Japanese upon the Asian people - and prisoners of war, is known and told to the world.

The conference lasted three days and was attended by more than 400 people – scholars, historians, those concerned about human rights, former POWs and civilian internees of the Japanese, witnesses to the horrible atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking and government officials. It was my privilege to have a part in one of the seminars and to be able to relate the story of the Taiwan POWs to those present, many of whom had never heard the story before.

Telling the story of the Taiwan POWs at the site of the former Mukden Camp

Following the conference I was invited by Mr. A.O. Wang, Vice President of the “Truth Council for World War II in Asia” to accompany his group on a tour of northeast China to visit the site of the former Mukden POW Camp at Shenyang and the infamous Unit 731 at Harbin where thousands of innocent Chinese – and some POWs as well, were subjected to all kinds of torture and medical experimentation.

I also suggested to A.O. before the conference that perhaps we could visit the site of the former Hsi An POW Camp in present day Liao Yuan, as that is where all of the top generals and the governors of all the Asian colonies were sent after they left Taiwan in the fall of 1944. A.O. agreed.

Mukden Camp Remembrance Service

On the evening of September 20th we left Beijing on the overnight train, arriving in Shenyang the next morning. Our first stop was the 918 Memorial Museum, followed by a visit to the home of former General Zhang Hsue Liang. The next day we met the US Consul General for tea at his residence and then proceeded to the site of the former Mukden POW Camp where more than 1500 allied POWs were held and used as slave labour during the war years. Of special interest to the Taiwan POWs’ story is the fact that about 300 higher-ranking officers and men were sent to Mukden from Shirakawa camp in the fall of 1944. We had a memorial service and then went to the former factory for a look around. We visited the former Ching Northern Palace and Tombs, as well as the prison at Fushun where the Last Emperor Pu-Yi was interned after the war, before heading north to Liao Yuan the next day.

At Liao Yuan we found the POW camp and although we weren’t allowed to take photos because it is a PLA army facility, we met with gov’t. officials who expressed interest in erecting a memorial to those famous POWs who were housed in the camp.

Unit 731 Building

From Liao Yuan we drove to Changchun for the night and the next morning had a tour of Pu-Yi’s Manchukuo Palace before moving on to finish our tour at Harbin.

The site of the former experimentation center is un-nerving and the evidence of the horrible atrocities we viewed on our tour of the facility left a lasting impression. I remarked to another member that “if Gen. Douglas MacArthur had seen this place he would have had the perpetrators executed on the spot, rather than pardoned as he did”.

It was a wonderful and very worthwhile trip and I thank GA and A.O. Wang for their kindness in inviting me, and also for their interest and support in helping us to know more about the Taiwan POWs’ story and to make it known. Now I only hope that we will get the memorials at the Mukden and Hsi An POW camp sites after all!

Sharing the Taiwan POWs’ story at the conference in Beijing	Former POW Barracks Building - Mukden	Presenting Gov’t. officials at Liao Yuan with the plan for a POW Memorial