ARTICLES & STORIES

ANOTHER SOURCE FOR FREE WAR GRAVE AND MEMORIAL PHOTOS. . .

We also recommend another excellent organization with a website offering thousands of FREE war grave and memorial photos worldwide. British War Graves - War Graves Photographs, founded and operated for over 10 years by Mick McCann in the UK, provides free photos for almost all the world’s war cemeteries and more.

With over 200 volunteers worldwide contributing photos to the collection, this is truly the place to look first to find a war grave or memorial photo – FREE !

Mick says . . . “If you are looking for a photograph of a British...

THINK ABOUT IT. . . .

Over the past number of years as I have gone about my daily routine of life, I have often been suddenly jolted by reality as I compared what I was doing at that very moment to how it must have been for the POWs here on Taiwan those many years ago.

For example, one Monday morning I woke up, not feeling “all that well” - most likely having a touch of the flu. My body ached from fever and I felt listless and tired. I didn’t feel like getting up and going...

TRIP TO KINKASEKI - TAIWAN - NOVEMBER 2009

I suspect the earliest part of planning for this trip actually must have started when I was a young boy - seven or eight years of age - at home in Clydach as I recall one day asking Dad why he had scars on his back and he told me that they were from working in the copper mine whilst he was at a Japanese Prisoner of War camp in Kinkaseki - Formosa (now Taiwan).

Growing up I became more and more aware of the fact...

THE REST OF THE STORY. . .

Early in December 2001, I read an article in an American POW newsletter by historian Greg Michno, who had written a soon to be published book on the subject of the hellships, called “Death on the Hellships”. Greg had somehow obtained official Japanese records and decrypts of sailing rosters and orders for all of the convoys and ships carrying POWs. He also had captured records and documents, plus offical US Navy records showing ships sunk, places and dates. His research is exhausting, and he finally corrects all...

JAPAN’S UNWARRANTED CRITICISMS

June 2004. . .

We recently received an article relating to the news that Japan had condemned the atrocities committed by American troops on some of the Iraqi prisoners of war. While these acts are certainly not right and should be condemned, as the following article points out, Japan is hardly in any position to criticize the actions of a few soldiers when their entire military was responsible for the slaughter of tens of thousands of prisoners of war held under their jurisdiction during World War II.

In addition to this, hundreds of thousands of innocent...

The RAKUYO AND KACHIDOKI MARUS

In the spring and early summer of 1944 a large group of so-called “fit” POWs were returned to Singapore from Thailand upon completion of the Death Railway.

On September 4, 1944 a convoy of several Japanese transport ships set sail from Singapore. There were two ships carrying POWs - the Rakuyo Maru with 1317 POWs and the Kachidoki Maru with 900 POWs aboard. On the 12th of September the Rakuyo Maru was torpedoed by the American submarine USS Sealion II at around 5:00am and the Kachidoki Maru received hits from the submarine Pampanito at around 11:00pm....