Green Island White Terror Memorial Park

The Green Island White Terror Memorial Park (綠島人權紀念園區) occupies a 32-hectare site on the northeast coast of Green Island (Ludao/綠島), a volcanic island approximately 33 kilometres off the southeast coast of Taiwan in Taitung County. Known as Kashoto (火燒島, "Island of Burning Fire") during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), the island's isolation and the treacherous "black tide" currents surrounding it made it an ideal location for detention facilities.

During the Japanese colonial era, the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan established a vagrants' shelter (浮浪者收容所) on the island, which operated from roughly 1911 to 1919. This facility was used to detain individuals deemed undesirable by the colonial authorities, marking the beginning of Green Island's long association with political and social confinement. The island's remote location in the Pacific made escape virtually impossible.

Following the end of Japanese rule in 1945 and the declaration of martial law in Taiwan in May 1949, the Kuomintang government transformed Green Island into the primary detention site for political dissidents during the White Terror period. In 1951 the provincial security command established the "New Life Correction Center" (新生訓導處) on the island to subject political prisoners to forced labour and ideological re-education. Prisoners built much of their own prison infrastructure. After the February 1970 Taiyuan Incident, a second, more secure facility — the Ministry of National Defense Green Island Reform and Reeducation Prison, known as the Oasis Villa (綠洲山莊) — was constructed; its cross-shaped main cell block is nicknamed the Bagua Building (八卦樓), and from 1972 political prisoners from Taiyuan and other military prisons were concentrated there.

The memorial park was inaugurated on 10 December 1999 when President Lee Teng-hui unveiled the Human Rights Monument, designed by architect Han Pao-teh (漢寶德). The monument features a wall inscribed with the names of political prisoners who were detained or executed during the White Terror. In February 2001 the Executive Yuan approved the name Green Island Human Rights Memorial Park (綠島人權紀念園區), and the park formally opened on 10 December 2002; it was renamed Green Island Culture Park in 2007 and Green Island Human Rights Culture Park in 2009. In 2018 it came under the newly established National Human Rights Museum (國家人權博物館) and was given its current title, Green Island White Terror Memorial Park (白色恐怖綠島紀念園區).

Today, the park preserves the original prison buildings of both the New Life Correction Center and Oasis Villa, which have been converted into exhibition spaces documenting the experiences of political prisoners through photographs, personal testimonies, artwork by former detainees, and historical artifacts. The site serves as Taiwan's foremost memorial to the victims of political persecution and is an essential component of the nation's transitional justice efforts.