Battle of Keelung: Japanese Bombardment & Capture of Ershawan Battery

Following the Treaty of Shimonoseki of April 1895, which ceded Taiwan to Japan, officials and gentry on the island proclaimed a Republic of Formosa on 23 May in an attempt to prevent the transfer, and the Imperial Japanese military launched its invasion of the island. The Imperial Guards Division (近衛師団) under Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa landed at Aodi (in present-day Gongliao District, New Taipei) on 29 May; according to Chinese-language accounts the roughly 1,000 defenders there dispersed without fighting. The Japanese advanced westward, drove the defenders from the Ruifang area at the beginning of June, and closed on Keelung.

On 3 June 1895, during the Battle of Keelung, the Japanese attacked by several routes while the Standing Fleet shelled the port from the sea. English-language accounts name five warships — Matsushima, Oshima, Naniwa, Takachiho and Chiyoda — which bombarded Ershawan Battery and the surrounding Keelung defenses. Ershawan, rebuilt by Liu Mingchuan as a modern battery after the Sino-French War, commanded the eastern shore of the harbour, but the garrison's morale had collapsed. The Imperial Guards Division attacked from the landward side and captured the battery with minimal opposition; by about 2 p.m. the Shiqiuling battery on the heights dominating Keelung had also fallen, opening the road to Taipei. English Wikipedia gives Japanese losses in the battle as 2 dead and 26 wounded.

After the fall of Keelung, President Tang Jingsong left Taipei in early June and sailed for the mainland from Tamsui. Japanese troops entered Taipei on 7 June and an inauguration ceremony of Japanese rule was held there on 17 June. Under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945), the Qing-era battery lost its strategic significance as Japan constructed modern coastal defense installations with newer technology. Ershawan Battery was not further modernized and gradually fell into disrepair during the 50-year Japanese occupation period.

After the war the site lay inside a restricted military zone. Its remains were rediscovered in 1975, a restoration design was completed in 1979 and the work was finished in June 1980. On 28 December 1983 the Ministry of the Interior listed it among the first group of first-class historic monuments, later reclassified as a national monument under the revised Cultural Heritage Preservation Act. The old gate inscribed 'Haimen Tianxian' (海門天險), gun emplacements, bunkers, a magazine, an old well and the graves of Henan soldiers survive in the Zhongzheng Park area of Keelung and are open to visitors.