British WWII POWs remember life as prisoners in Taiwan

Every day, they had to climb 800 steps to work in the mine and were given only a small amount of rice and watery soup with a few vegetables, according to Vickerstaff, who added that most of the men ended up weighing less than 45 kg.

Asked whether they hated Japan for their suffering, the three former POWs expressed different feelings.

Roy, 88, who was held at Camp No. 6 where he was engaged in farming and worked in a railway repair shop, said he hated the Japanese at the beginning, but as the years have gone by, he now lets bygones be bygones.

Wood expressed similar feelings, saying that whenever he thinks of the image of a little Taiwanese girl he met after being released from the camp, he lost all his hatred toward Japan. The image of the girl, who was terrified of him because the prisoners were smeared by the Japanese as ruthless killers, haunted him for years, he added.

Vickerstaff said his feelings for the Japanese have never amounted to hate, but that he would never forgive them for what they did because a lot of it was “totally unnecessary.”

“I feel sorry for them because they were so inhumane and I think a lot of it has to do with the way the Japanese army was trained. They turned decent, ordinary people into savages and we had to suffer for that,” said Vickerstaff.

“It was sheer determination that kept us going. We always knew that in the end we were going to win the war, so it was always a question of 'can we last out until that time?'” he added.

Saying that they will never forget what the Japanese did, the three POWs said they would love to see the Japanese government acknowledge and apologize properly for their atrocities, but added that they have nothing against the younger generation of Japan because they are not the ones to be blamed.

“The whole purpose of the war was to make them see that their way was wrong and our way was better,” Wood said.

Turning to their impressions of Taiwan, Roy, who brought his son along on the trip, said he was surprised by the experience and would like to come back with his daughter in the future so that they could see with their own eyes some of the images in his stories about Taiwan and could learn more about this page of history.

Wood said that while Taiwan was a complete and utter mystery to him during his imprisonment and even today, “the kindness of the people and the hospitality is out of this world.”

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