Taihoku Prisoner of War Camp No. 6

Taihoku Prisoner of War Camp No. 6 (台北捕虜収容所第六分所), designated as Camp No. 6 under the Taiwan POW Camp Headquarters (台湾俘虜収容所本所) in Taihoku (present-day Taipei), was one of the principal Allied prisoner-of-war facilities on the island of Formosa (Taiwan) during the Second World War. The camp was situated in the Dazhi (大直) district of northern Taipei, on land that is today the site of the Republic of China Ministry of National Defense (國防部) headquarters complex.

The camp became operational on 14 November 1942, receiving its first contingent of prisoners transferred from the fall of Singapore earlier that year. The initial intake consisted primarily of men from the 5th Field Regiment of the British Royal Artillery and the 9th/11th Indian Division Signals; the camp held almost entirely British prisoners. These prisoners had endured the harrowing voyage from Singapore aboard the England Maru, one of the notorious Japanese "hellships" used to transport POWs under appalling conditions — overcrowded holds with minimal food, water, and ventilation.

Of the approximately 1,100 British Commonwealth troops who disembarked at Keelung (Kiirun) harbor, roughly 575 were assigned to Taihoku Camp No. 6, while the remainder were sent to the infamous Kinkaseki (金瓜石) Camp No. 1 in the mountains of northeastern Taiwan, where they were forced to labor in copper and gold mines under notoriously brutal conditions.

At Taihoku Camp No. 6, the prisoner population averaged around 500 men throughout its operational period. Detainees were employed in various forms of forced labor: building a memorial park and an artificial lake for the Japanese, agricultural work, and, later, work in the Taihoku railway and bus repair shops. Rations were meager and supplemented only when prisoners could cultivate additional food in the camp gardens. Tropical diseases — malaria, dysentery, and beriberi — were endemic, and medical supplies were critically scarce.

During the camp's approximately three years of operation, a total of 74 Allied prisoners died in captivity from a combination of disease, malnutrition, and the cumulative effects of forced labor. This mortality rate, while lower than the catastrophic figures at Kinkaseki, nonetheless represented a significant loss of life.

In the final year of the war (1944-1945), Taihoku Camp No. 6 increasingly functioned as a transit facility. It was the main transit camp for movements to and from Kinkaseki, and in late 1944 and early 1945 prisoners from other camps passed through it on their way to Japan proper and Japanese-occupied Manchuria (northeastern China); a few American and Dutch POWs were also held there in the last months of the war. In July 1945, 150 men were sent from the camp to build the Oka satellite camp in the hills southwest of the city, where ten died during construction and nine more shortly after their return. Many of these transport voyages proved deadly, as Allied submarines and aircraft, unaware of the human cargo below decks, attacked Japanese shipping with increasing frequency.

Following Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945, the surviving prisoners at Taihoku Camp No. 6 were liberated. The camp was evacuated on 6 September 1945, and the facilities were subsequently demolished. The site, identified by the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society in 2000, remained an empty field until construction began in 2009 on the headquarters of the Republic of China Ministry of National Defense, which formally relocated to the completed Boai Camp (博愛營區) complex in December 2014.

In November 2011, the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society, working in cooperation with the ROC Ministry of National Defense, erected a memorial stele (紀念碑) within the ministry grounds to honor the Allied servicemen who were imprisoned and who perished at Camp No. 6. The memorial stands near the corner of Beian Road (北安路) and Tongbei Street (通北街), close to the Dazhi MRT station. While the stele is located within the restricted MND compound and requires special permission for direct access, it can be viewed from the adjacent public sidewalk. Annual memorial services are conducted at the site by the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society.

The camp was one of 14 POW camps that operated across wartime Taiwan, collectively holding over 4,350 Allied prisoners according to the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society. The Society has erected memorials at many of the former camp sites around the island, ensuring that the suffering and sacrifice of these men is not forgotten.