The history of World War II prisoners of war (POWs) held captive in Taiwan should be presented in a way that reflects diverse perspectives, Culture Minister Lung Ying-tai said Tuesday during a visit to a former POW camp.
'When we are commemorating history on this small plot of ground in Jinguashi, we should take into consideration the complexity of history and not view it from a single perspective,” Lung said at the former Kinkaseki POW Camp, which was built when Taiwan was under Japanese rule between 1895 and 1945. The camp is now transformed into a memorial park in New Taipei.
Lung made the remark after Cheng Chun-shan, a 78 year-old former worker in a local mine, who guided the Minister around the park, said the government is not concerned about the Taiwanese people who were forced by the Japanese military to work as guards at the camp and who were imprisoned or sentenced to death by the Allies after the war.
Lung said later that she has already asked officials at her ministry to coordinate with the New Taipei city government to discuss how to present that aspect of history.
She proposed that a better way would be for civic groups to gather people with different historical viewpoints, who could then give her ministry a proposal on what they hope could be done.
In 1942, 523 prisoners of war from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were transported by the Japanese to the Kinkaseki camp, where they were forced to labor in a copper mine and were subjected to inhumane treatment.
The New Taipei city government has spent NT$36 million (US$1.19 million) building the memorial park and erecting a stone wall in the park that is engraved with the names of the over 4,000 POWs who were held captive around Taiwan between 1942 and 1945.
A memorial ceremony for the POWs is also held at the camp on the second Sunday of November every year.
