A headstone with an inscription in English believed to date to World War II that recently went missing from a graveyard in Taipei has been retrieved and temporarily listed as a historical relic, the Taipei City Government said on Tuesday.
The headstone, discovered during a burial site relocation project in Xinyi District (信義), had been reported to police as missing by Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-pei (許家蓓).
Police tracked down the headstone and returned it to the site, where it was on Monday analyzed by experts from the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs.
Photo courtesy of Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-pei’s office
The department’s Cultural Heritage Division said that the headstone, which had been retrieved from an unidentified individual, was temporarily stored at a local police station.
The city government said that by temporarily listing the headstone as a historical relic, it would be possible to pursue legal action if it was taken again.
The headstone was discovered in March after the city government was to begin relocating 30 graves in hills near Fude Street on Jan. 28, as part of a road expansion project.
After the city government ordered the graves to be relocated by April 30, visitors discovered an inscription in English on one of the headstones thought to read either “Clack, Eric Arthur,” or “Clack, Erec Arthur,” indicating that the person passed away on Aug. 25, 1945.
Pictures of the headstone were on March 31 posted on the Facebook page of Taiwan Ancient Tomb Detectives, a group of local cemetery enthusiasts, alongside another two stones that were too badly weathered to make out names or dates of death.
Members of the group speculated that the headstones might date to World War II, with military historian Chang Wei-bin (張維斌) on Sunday saying that they could mark the graves of British soldiers who had been captured and sent to Taiwan, which was then a Japanese colony, as prisoners of war.
However, cultural heritage conservationist Hsiao Wen-chieh (蕭文杰) said that as cement was valuable during the war, it was unlikely to be used to make headstones for prisoners of war, unless they were Allied soldiers who died near the end of the war.
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