Historical Treasures . . .
        My good friend and fellow historian / researcher, Mr. Roger Mansell of the USA, has just recently returned from a visit to the National Archives in Washington. During the two weeks he spent there, he went through stacks and boxes of files on the Far East POWs - some for the research he is doing into the fate of the American POWs in the South Pacific, and some for the information I am trying to collect on the POW camps and the POWs of Taiwan.
        Roger has made several trips to the Archives over the past couple of years and each time he has sent me copies of items he felt might be of interest - including all the official intelligence reports gathered after the war. This time however, I was able to give him some suggestions on things to look for and also some direction as to where these items might be found. This info was supplied by another POW historian friend.
          When Roger returned this time he couldn’t wait to email me with a list of all the “goodies” he had been able to find. He got copies of the official order by the Japanese High Command - to kill all the prisoners if the Allies landed, and also documents trying to cover up the atrocities committed by the camp guards. He uncovered a photo collection, previously unknown, and sent some very unique and interesting photos.
        One that really got me was a photo of a Japanese guard and one of the senior officers by a stream - fishing! If our readers will recall, in the last issue we had an interview with the former Taiwan soldier who told us the location of Taihoku-Mosak Camp. In the interview he mentioned that one day as he passed the camp, he saw a guard and one of the officer-prisoners going down the road and he asked the guard where he was taking the prisoner. “Fishing”, the guard replied - and now we have a photo to prove it!
       This is the kind of thing that seems to happen all the time in this work. It is really amazing what can turn up unexpectedly in a FEPOW’s letter. Stories of people, places and incidents that we had only heard about, are now documented with photographic proof!
       Over the past couple of years I have received from other POWs - copies of their diaries with daily entries describing the beatings and the suffering that the POWs endured through lack of food and medicines. Incidents record the death of a friend and the conditions in the camps, as well as movements from one place to another. All of this material contains first-hand accounts of what really happened during those awful times and soon will be the subject of a historical book on the POW camps of Taiwan. The story will be told!