2003 + . . . the Year in Review
by Michael Hurst MBE

So much has happened this past year since our last newsletter that I hardly know where to start with this report.

Beginning in February 2003 we participated in a special event to highlight the Kukutsu POW Camp in the hills south of Hsintien. The county government held an open house in the area and we were invited to share the story of the POWs and the former camp with the local community. This led to a great deal of interest in the POWs’ story and a drive to get a new site established for the Kukutsu POW Memorial stone which had to be relocated due to a construction project. In the weeks and months that followed a location was found and a base for the new memorial was designed.

On February 17 this year we finally got the former Kukutsu POW Memorial stone re-mounted into the new permanent base that was constructed late last year. A ceremony to re-dedicate the newly mounted memorial stone will take place on May 16, 2004. More to come on that later.

In March we had a visit from Kent Steele and his wife Vivian from Canada. Kent’s father Lt. William Paton Steele of the Royal Engineers had been a POW in the Heito Camp in the fall of 1942 for several months before being moved on to Japan where he remained for the rest of the war until liberation.

Lt. Steele had told his family that there was a guard at the Heito Camp who he thought must have been a Christian as he gave him some verses from the Bible to cheer him up one day when he was feeling particularly down and despondent. We related this story to one of the former guards we know in Pingtung and he said that it would have been him as he was the only Christian he knew of. He had felt sorry for a lot of the POWs and often tried to cheer them up or slip them a cigarette through the bamboo fence.

We had the pleasure of taking Kent and Vivian down to the Heito camp for a visit and also to meet his father’s former guard. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and remembrance, and another opportunity for reconciliation which we are glad to have a part in.

On April 3 rd I was informed of the sudden passing of my dear friend Maurice Rooney. It came as a real shock to me, as it was to many of our FEPOW friends. I flew to the UK to be at his funeral, which was attended by many of his friends and former POW mates. The service was very moving and while of course a sad occasion, it was also a celebration of the life of a man who was loved by so many, and who contributed so much to the happiness of his family and those he came in contact with, as well as the FEPOW community in the Norfolk area. As the UK representative for the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society for five years, he also made many friends with the former Taiwan POWs and their families all across the UK. I miss him so much, and there is hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of him and remember his cheery smile and happy ways.

After spending a few more days in Norwich with Maurice’s family and friends, I moved on to Nottinghamshire to stay with former Taiwan POW Stan Vickerstaff and his son Roger for about a week. During that

time we were able to dedicate the Taiwan POW Memorial Tree at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire (see story on page 6), and also to pay a visit to former POW Maurice Cunningham who lives in Birmingham.

I particularly wanted to see Maurice to show him some photos that I had taken of the area of the former OKA Camp that we had been trying so hard to find. Upon seeing the photos he felt that this was the area, and as it fit the description that has been given to us by other survivors of that camp as well, we now feel that at last we can confirm the location of the last camp. (See story on page 5).

Throughout the year we did further research at several of the camps – Taihoku Mosak #5, Inrin and Inrin Temporary Camps, Shirakawa Camp and Toroku Camp in September (see story on page 8). I was also privileged to address the students at Fu Ren University on two occasions to introduce them to the Taiwan POWs’ story.

We also had a visit by Mr. Chang, the Head of the Academia Historica, Taiwan’s highest government research institute, in the fall, seeking our co-operation in helping make the story of the Taiwan POWs known to the people of Taiwan. We are currently working on that project as well.

Then it was our annual Remembrance Week activity from November 12 – 20 with former POW John Emmett of Brampton Canada in attendance. (See story on page 4).

In the past few months we have been working with the management and staff of the new museum in Chinguashi with regards to getting the POW display up so that everyone who visits the museum will know of the POWs and their story – not only at Kinkaseki, but the other camps as well.

We are still in negotiations with regards to placing the fourth POW memorial at the site of the Heito Camp in Southern Taiwan, and continuing research on the crash site of the PB4Y-1 shot down in the sea off the southern tip of the island. In the coming months we are also planning to get more information about the camps onto our website.

Longer range projects involve further work on a permanent Taiwan POW Museum, putting our artifact collection on the website, and co-operating on the production of a documentary on the Taiwan POWs. Somewhere in all of this, I hope to continue work on the book on the Taiwan camps and the stories of the men who were interned in them, and hope to finish it by the end of the year if at all possible. So it’s going to be a busy time indeed.

We are still finding former Taiwan POWs every month, and we encourage anyone who was a POW, or knows of someone – family or friend, who was, to contact us, as we want to know more about you or your loved one. Let us all work together to continue to learn more about the Taiwan POWs’ story – we need the help of everyone to see that this is accomplished and that these wonderful men who gave so much are “Never Forgotten”.

(Photos from some of the items mentioned in this article appear on the cover of this issue.)