We walked along some of the old rail lines and talked to one of the older neighbours who remembered the POWs and their time there.
         The former POW cemetery is situated just off the main rail line about 6 km. from the camp. It was part of a larger Chinese cemetery, which still exists, although the former POW burial ground is no longer there.
         The bodies were all removed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1946 and re-buried at Sai-Wan Bay POW Cemetery in Hong Kong, along with the men from Kinkaseki and the other POW camps on Taiwan. The site is now a large grassy area amidst a grove of palms.
         It was an exciting experience to be walking the pages of history once again, and to find real evidence of that former time and place. That makes six of the former POW camps that have been found to date, and we have been greatly encouraged by this trip to carry on in our search for the rest.
         We are thankful to all those who helped us with our quest - those POWs who supplied information and leads, Mr. Huang and Mr. Ou Yang from Taiwan Sugar, Miss Huang and her assistants in Ping Tung, and especially to Mr. Lin and his family for their help and co-operation and understanding.
         We are thankful too, for our many friends who continually encourage us. Thank you for your interest and your support, and stay with us as we’ll have more news for you in the months to come!

UPDATE ON POW CAMP. . .

          In the last issue of NEVER FORGOTTEN, we mentioned that the “Taihoku-Mosak” POW camp was still a mystery, as we had no confirmation of the existence of such a camp.
Since then, through more reserach and the information received from one of the former POWs, we have now established that this was in fact one of the camps, and have formally added it to our list of camps to search for.
The camp was only a temporary facility - used to house the very senior officers and civilian governors, while they were in transit from Taiwan to Japan. There was a total of 32 persons interned in this camp - somewhere in the hills near Taihoku (Taipei). If any of our readers can help with information regarding this camp, please contact us.
        

ALICE’S STORY. . .

        I received a letter from a dear lady in the UK just two days before we left for the south of Taiwan to try to locate the site of the former Heito POW Camp. Her name is Alice Myerscough, and her story is a very heart-warming one.
       It seems Alice's fiancee,  L/Sgt. Alan T. Bowman of the 125th Anti-tank Reg’t. R.A., died as a POW while at Heito Camp and was buried in the local POW cemetery there.
       Alice never married - such was her love for her former fiancee. She has lived all her life with her memories of him and their brief time together before the war.
        For many years she has wanted so much to come to Taiwan to see the place where her dearest friend had spent the last years of his life, and the place where he had been buried. However, she knew no-one in Taiwan and didn’t know where to begin to look for the Heito Camp and former cemetery.
        She knew that Alan’s body had been removed from the old cemetery in Taiwan by the Commonwealth War Graves Commisssion and had been re-buried at Sai-Wan Bay POW Cemetery in Hong Kong, but she wanted to see where he had been buried the first time and the camp where he worked.
         Repeated attempts to gain information from various sources including the Royal British Legion, the War Graves Commission, the Imperial War Museum and finally, the Taiwan government, turned up nothing. Then she heard of the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society through a friend in the UK and contacted our UK rep, Maurice Rooney. Maurice suggested she write to us, and "the rest is history" as they say.
         When I called her later on the same day as I had received her letter, and told her we were about to leave for Heito, she was thrilled.
          Since she had brought up the part about wanting to see the cemetery where her fiancee was temporaily buried, that gave us another objective, so I rushed out and got another topographical map, as the War Graves Commission had given map references for a completely different area than what we had for Heito Camp. We re-plotted everything and added the cemetery to our itinery at the last moment.