Recently, through a contact in the US, we received a list of surviving American POWs who were interned in Taiwan during World War II.
      The list came from the American Ex-Prisoners of War Association. We have been corresponding with them and plan to work more closely together in the future.
      We are now contacting these POWs to find out where they were held captive and to learn more about their experiences here. It is hoped that this new pool of survivors can provide further information and insight into the other camps on Taiwan.

      Sam Gerovich, Representative of the Australian Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei, has provided a list of Australian ex-POWs who were interned on Taiwan during the Second World War. The list was supplied by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
      There are 33 names on the list and an attempt is being made at this time through our Australia rep., Sid Dodds, to see if any of these former POWs still survive.

      According to information received from some of the POWs, there was another “jungle camp” in the hills near Taipei at the end of the war. The most well-known of the jungle camps is the one referred to in the books by Jack Edwards and Arthur Titherington - where the survivors of Kinkaseki were sent. This camp called “Kukutsu”, was located in the hills south of Hsintien, a southern suburb of Taipei. We have already located the site of this camp. (see pg. 2)
      This “other” jungle camp was somewhere in the close proximity of Taipei city at the time, but not in the same area as the Kukutsu Camp. The POWs tell of a long climb of 5 miles to reach this camp high in the hills - a journey that took all day.
      To date we have made contact with four of the survivors of this camp, including the medical officer, Dr. Coone, an American who had been interned in the Philippines for most of the war and who had come to Taipei right at the end, only to be sent “up the hill” to the camp they called the “OKA CAMP”
      So far we have been unable to ascertain just where this camp might have been located, or even which direction from Taipei it lay. We have a list of all the POWs who were in this camp - mostly British, with some American and a few from Australia, Ireland, India, the Philippines and Holland.
      Also, there was another camp referred to in the Allied Intelligence reports after the war as Taihoku-Mosak Camp, where it is reported that a number of the senior officers were kept for a very short time while in transit through Taiwan. All details about this camp remain a mystery.
      If any of our readers can help shed some light on the possible location of these camps, or have information that can help us learn more about them, please contact us as soon as possible. Thank you!

This brings to a close the first edition of our TAIWAN POW CAMPS MEMORIAL SOCIETY newsletter.
      As you can see we have many interesting projects on the go and many more that we hope to undertake in the future. To date this has all been pretty much a one-man show, as I have spent the past year compiling a great deal of material from various sources and doing a lot of research on my own.
      However, with the formation of the Society we now have a real team to carry on the work that was began on the Kinkaseki Committee, and I trust we will have the support and enthusiasm of the local community as well as that of the surviving POWs we have contacted. So until next time -