Events and Announcements

Fixed Gear, the local bike blog, announces a meetup on May 31:

The first session Manhattan Cup Fixed gear meet up will be launched in Taichung on May 31st (Sunday).
For all participants from North, Central, South of Taiwan,
The location has transposed to Taiwan’s first three dimensional bike parking area’s TIGER CITY, to give everyone a fresh feelings.
Date: 2009.5.31
Location: Taichung TIGER CITY 1F Square
Activities: Keirin . Foot Down . Stand Comp . Trick Battle
Sponsorship: MANHATTAN . COG . Fyxation . Milwaukee . XXI . OZOTW . INTEGRAL 03 . SDG
Agenda:
Location: TIGER CITY 1F Square >> First Stop Yi-Chung SDG pick-up present Second Stop Ching-Mei Eslite’ SKID race (All participants will be enrolled for raffle ticket and prize).
Time Line: 1PM – 10PM
We would like to welcome all FIXED GEAR lovers to join in us
Kind Reminder: Suggested to bring helmet and bike lighting

And the Taiwan POW Camps Society has another activity, dedicating a memorial for the Toroku Camp:

The Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society would like to extend an invitation to you to attend the dedication ceremony for the new TOROKU CAMP POW MEMORIAL located at Gou-Ba Elementray school in the village of Gou-Ba near the city of Douliou. The ceremony will take place on Saturday June 6th at 1:00 pm

The Toroku Camp was first occupied by American POWs who came to Taiwan from the Philippines in November 1944 off the hellship Hokusen Maru. After a terrible 39-day voyage the men were off-loaded on Taiwan for a period to regain their health before being moved on to Japan for further slave labour. The more than 1100 men on the ship were distributed throughout several camps in Taiwan, 294 of them being sent to Toroku Camp. Here with no slave labour and better living conditions, their health gradually began to improve. In mid-January 1945 most of the men were removed from the camp and sent either to Kaohsiung or Keelung, loaded onto ships and sent on to Japan.

Following this, a number of British POWs from Inrin Camp were moved into Toroku and stayed there with the few remaining Americans until April 1945 when they were all moved to Shirakawa Camp and Toroku Camp was closed. In total five men died in this camp. It is all these men - several of whom are still living today, who we want to remember and honour with the memorial.

We plan to charter a bus to take our staff and interested friends from Taipei to the ceremony. The cost will be NT$500 / person for the day - including fruit drinks on the bus - lunch is on your own. We will leave promptly at 9 am from in front of the Friends Hotel near the corner of Roosevelt Road and Hoping West Road. This location is easily accessible from the Guting MRT Station (take exit # 8). We will return that afternoon around 5 - 6 pm.

At this point the chartering of the bus will depend on whether we can fill it or not to help defray the costs. If not enough interest is shown then we will only hire a van to transport the staff and participants to the service.

So if you are interested in attending, please contact us by email ONLY at society@powtaiwan.org as soon as possible. The deadline for reservations for the bus is 5 pm on MONDAY JUNE 1st.

There are only 12 or 13 seats available so it's "first come, first served". Once you register your name will be put on the list and you will be contacted next week - if enough people sign up, to confirm that the bus will in fact be going. We certainly hope that there will be enough participants for the bus to go. If you have any questions kindly let us know by email. Also, if for some reason after reserving a seat, if you find that you cannot go, please let us know right away so we can give your seat to someone else.

Thank you again for your continued interest in the Taiwan POWs and our work to make sure that their story is told and that they are not forgotten. We are looking forward to a wonderful day and hope that you can be part of this history-making event with us.

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