Eighty years after the Raid on Taipei, survivors still remember the terror they felt when U.S. bombers filled the sky on May 31, 1945. Then part of the Japanese Empire, Taiwan lost an estimated 3,000 people in just three hours. The deadliest attack of World War II on the island remains a haunting memory.
00:0080 years ago, in the closing months of World War II, Zhang Jingzhao, then aged 15, was about to experience one of life's great milestones, her final day of school.
00:10But it isn't classmates or diplomas she remembers most vividly.
00:30The May 31st, 1945 air raid on Taipei was the worst to hit Taiwan during the war.
00:35The island, then a colony of the Japanese Empire, was a key strategic hub in Japan's war effort.
00:41Japan had occupied Formosa, Korea, and part of China.
00:47Taiwan plays a fundamental role in both trade, due to its kind of maritime crossroads, as one approaches Southeast Asia, of course.
00:58And it also plays an important military hub as the war expands from the late 1930s, but then really with the Pacific War in the early 1940s, because the majority of many ships will travel through that area.
01:11The Allied air forces began bombing Taiwan in earnest in 1943, but early raids were sporadic, mostly carried out by smaller carrier-based planes with light payloads targeting industrial areas.
01:23Zhang Jingzhao could see and hear them from as far away as Shindian, in what is now New Taipei.
01:32They were hitting hard all over the map, all around the clock.
01:36Lin Wenming was in Wanli, in what is now New Taipei, when it was attacked as part of U.S. bombings targeting the Kipor of nearby Jilong.
01:55Lin Wenming was in Wanli.
01:56Lin Wenming was in Wanli, in what is now New Taipei, when it was attacked as part of U.S. bombings targeting the Kipor of nearby Jilong.
02:02Lin Wenming was in Wanli, in Wanli.
02:03Lin Wenming was in Wanli.
02:04Lin Wenming was in Wanli, with the nuclear war on the top of U.S. bombings in revelation, and with the military references, we added war, at the top of U.S. bombings in forest.
02:09In May 1945, with Germany defeated, the U.S. turned
02:39its full might towards the Empire of Japan.
02:42On the final day of May, 117 heavier B-24 bombers left the recently liberated Philippines bound
02:49for Taipei, where they met almost no resistance.
02:53The U.S. took a few days after the war,
02:58one day before the war, two days before the war,
03:03three days after the war, three days after the war.
03:06The entire city, all from the 10th of the war,
03:11the war from the war, and the war from the war.
03:13The bombings continued until about one in the afternoon, killing an estimated 3,000 people in just three hours.
03:37Around 3,000 bombs ravaged Taipei's central government district.
03:40Strategic sites like Taipei Main Station were hit, along with landmarks such as parks, what is now the presidential office, and Longshan Temple.
03:49The bombings brought the city to a standstill, driving home the fact that by May of 1945,
04:11the tide of war had turned firmly against the Japanese Empire.
04:14Taiwan certainly felt the effects of the war.
04:17There was significant Allied bombing at various points in the war on Taipei and other cities,
04:23which essentially were considered to be under Japanese occupation, or at least part of the Japanese Empire.
04:28Sources differ, but around 5,000 civilians in Taiwan were killed in air raids during World War II, most of them on May 31st.
04:37Eighty years later, the raid is only vaguely remembered, suppressed by Cold War narratives and overshadowed by far deadlier attacks elsewhere around the same time.
