Jack Edwards (Hong Kong) - British Army Career

British Army Career

Edwards was an army sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals when Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942. He was interned for some time by the Japanese in the notorious Changi jail before transported to the then Japanese colony of Taiwan. Edwards was put into the Kinkaseki POW camp, a mountainous region near Jiufen, where he and 525 other inmates were forced to work the copper mine daily in tropical heat. To get to the mine, parties had to walk up 250 steps to top of a ridge, then down 831 more to sea, and then descend a further 800 steps inside the mine to the working face on the lowest levels. So ever day before, and then again after work, the men had to walk up and down 1,881 crudely cut steps (by way of comparison there are 1,665 steps to the small platform on the top of the Eiffel Tower). His team was required to bring out 24 bogeys of copper every single day, if not, they were then beaten. As men died, or were transferred to other camps because they were too weak and ill to continue working, replacement contingents were drafted in to make up the numbers.

From the initial contingent of 525 only 120 remained in Kinkaseki when the camp was abandoned between 16 and 30 May 1945. Edwards was moved to a remote jungle camp called Kukutsu in the Taihoku Heighs about 12 miles (19 km) from Shinten. He was in the first party to arrive on the 1 June 1945. Their first task was to construct the camp as the site was a derelict tea plantation with no facilities. All materials for the construction were carried by the prisoners who were forced to carry 40 to 60 kilograms (88 to 130 lb) each. On the 28 August 1945 the USAAF started to drop food supplies on the camp and on the afternoon of 5 September American Marines arrived at the jungle camp. He and others were so emaciated that their eyes were sunken and their bodies mere skeletons of their former selves.