Karenko POW Camp (花蓮戰俘營)

A monument erected in 2012 in front of the former site of the POW camp at Karenko. Karenko was the POW camp in Taiwan where Imperial Japan held the most senior Allied officers taken in the opening year of World War 2. These officers were separated from the men they led, starting in August 1942 with the arrival of US Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright and 178 others taken from the Philippines. In September, Lieutenant General Arthur Percival and the commanders taken at Singapore and in the Dutch East Indies followed by way of the POW camp at Heito, together with colonial governors and civil officials from Singapore, Malaya, and Sumatra. Some 401 prisoners passed through in ten months, forced into farming and goat herding and denied food and medicine. Three died here, the first being Major General Merton Beckwith-Smith in November 1942. The explanatory plaque next to the monument is unusually detailed and fully bilingual. Ahead of a Red Cross inspection the Japanese moved 117 of the…