Kinkaseki POW and Jinguashi Mining Area

Jinguashi, in the mountains of Ruifang District, New Taipei City, was a major gold and copper mining area developed intensively under Japanese rule. During the Second World War the Japanese operated a prisoner-of-war camp here, known by the Japanese name for the area, Kinkaseki, where Allied prisoners, many captured at the fall of Singapore, were forced to labour in the copper mine under severe conditions. Beaten, starved and worked in extreme heat underground, a great many suffered and died; the camp became one of the most notorious for POWs in the region. The wider landscape still bears the marks of a century of mining in its tunnels, ruins and terraced hillsides.

Given the hardship endured here, the memorial site and the old mine workings carry a heavy resonance, and some visitors report a sombre, weighty atmosphere. These are personal responses to a place of documented suffering, and the memorial presents the POWs' story through history and remembrance rather than ghost lore.

The site's genuine value is twofold: as a memorial to the prisoners of war who laboured and died at Kinkaseki, marked by a dedicated memorial park and wall of names, and as an exceptional industrial-heritage landscape now interpreted by the Gold Museum, which preserves the mining history alongside the human story.

The mining area is presented as the New Taipei City Gold Museum, an open-air heritage complex covering the former Jinguashi mines, with buildings, tunnels and displays that include the history of the Kinkaseki POW camp; the museum has set opening hours and some ticketed experiences. Nearby, the Taiwan POW Memorial Park, maintained with the help of the Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society, marks the former camp with a memorial wall and information panels and is freely accessible.

Visitors can combine the museum with the memorial and the surrounding mining landscape, much of it explored on foot over hilly terrain. As the POW site commemorates real suffering and death, it deserves quiet respect; travellers should check current museum hours and access before visiting.