Wartime Intensification of Jinguashi Gold and Copper Mining

The Jinguashi (Kinkaseki) Mine, in today's Ruifang District, New Taipei, was first developed under Japanese rule by Tanaka Chobei's Tanaka-gumi; after enargite copper ore was found in the Benshan workings in 1904 it produced both gold and copper. In 1933 the Nippon Mining Company bought the mine and greatly expanded its plant, later operating it through its subsidiary Taiwan Kōgyō K.K. In 1936 it produced 7,350 tons of copper, the highest output in Taiwan, and in 1938 gold output peaked at nearly 70,000 taels.

Following the outbreak of full-scale war with China in 1937 and the Pacific War from 1941, the Japanese government classified the Jinguashi Mine's gold and copper output as strategically vital to the war effort: gold paid for war materiel bought from neutral countries, while copper was needed for munitions and shipbuilding. US Navy intelligence identified it as one of the Empire's largest gold sources. The Nippon Mining Company (through its subsidiary Taiwan Kōgyō K.K.) was directed to maximise production at all costs. To address chronic labour shortages caused by military conscription of Japanese males, the military established the Kinkaseki POW Camp (Taiwan POW Camp No. 1) on 14 November 1942 adjacent to the mine. The first 523 prisoners arrived from Singapore, and in all over 1,100 British Commonwealth and Allied prisoners, most of them British, were forced into slave labour in the deep copper mine tunnels under lethal conditions; survivors described constant beatings, starvation and diseases such as beriberi. In addition, conscripted Taiwanese (本島人) and Korean workers were mobilised.

By 1944–1945, Allied naval interdiction made ore shipment to Japan impossible, and the mine's output collapsed. Copper mining stopped in March 1945 and the surviving prisoners were relocated in stages to the Kukutsu camp in the hills of Xindian, the move being complete by late June. According to English Wikipedia, most of the 430 Allied POW deaths in the fourteen camps on Taiwan occurred at Kinkaseki; Chinese Wikipedia states that only 89 of the first 523 men survived to the Japanese surrender. On 28 May 1947 British War Crimes Court No. 5 in Hong Kong tried nine Nippon Mining employees and found eight guilty, holding the company responsible for the ill-treatment of the prisoners.

After the war the mine was taken over by the Nationalist government, reorganised as the Taiwan Metal Mining Corporation in 1955 and closed in 1987. A memorial was dedicated on the camp site on 23 November 1997 and enlarged into the Taiwan POW Memorial Park in 2005, where a remembrance service is held each November; the mine itself opened to visitors as the Gold Museum (Gold Ecological Park) in 2004.