TAIWAN’S POW MEMORIALS BECOME RECOGNIZED IN WORLDWIDE TRAVEL GUIDES

Major international travel guide books - Insight Guide, Lonely Planet and Rough Guide now all feature articles and information on the former Japanese POW camp at Jinguashi (better known as Kinkaseki), as well as reference to the other camps and memorials erected by the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society around the island.

Insight Guide has a good description of what there is to see at Jinguashi with a short summary on the POW camp. Rough Guide has perhaps the best presentation, not only highlighting the things to see and do at Jinguashi’s Gold Ecological Park, but also a good and accurate story of the camps and the POW Society and the other memorials erected around the island. The website is also mentioned which hopefully will be a good contact feature. Lonely Planet includes a mention of Jinguashi in its section on travel in the northeastern part of the island.

Insight Guide (top) and Rough Guide (at left) are helping international visitors to learn about the Taiwan POW camps, and hopefully they will want to come and discover more about them firsthand from the POW Society. The Society is working on opening a Taiwan POW Museum in the Taipei area in the near future, thus providing more information on this little-known part of WW II history

HELLSHIPS MEMORIAL IS FEATURED IN KAOHSIUNG TRAVEL GUIDE

The “Taiwan Hellships Memorial” which is located near the Kaohsiung harbour in the Chijin District, has been included in the latest Kaohsiung City travel guide book pictured on the left.

The guide book tells the story of the hellships and in particular the bombing of the Enoura Maru in January 1945 and how the memorial is in remembrance of all those POWs who suffered and those who died on the hellships in Taiwan waters.

Hopefully all these new travel guides will help to make international travelers, as well as people in Taiwan, more aware of the Taiwan POWs’ story. We must never forget