Tainan Air Raid

Tainan was the seat of Tainan Prefecture under Japanese rule and the administrative and commercial centre of southern Taiwan. American air attacks on Taiwan's airfields and harbours began in October 1944; after US forces returned to the Philippines in early 1945, the Fifth Air Force, based on Luzon, took over the bombing of Taiwan and its targets widened from military installations to cities. Before 1 March 1945 the city centre of Tainan had not suffered large-scale area bombing, and many residents had not been evacuated.

The Tainan air raid refers chiefly to the attack of 1 March 1945, when aircraft of the US Fifth Air Force carried out a large-scale indiscriminate bombing of the district around the administrative centre of Tainan. According to accounts based on Chang Wei-bin's study of the air raids on Taiwan, 25 B-24 Liberators dropped 500-pound bombs, followed by 16 more B-24s dropping 500-pound incendiaries. The Chinese Wikipedia article treats the raids on the city as continuing until 20 March.

A total of 1,073 buildings in the city were burned out or destroyed. The Tainan Prefecture Hall (now the National Museum of Taiwan Literature) lost its roof, the Tainan Hospital and the Confucius Temple were hit, the Liangguang Guild Hall was destroyed, and the Hayashi Department Store still bears scars on its roof. Many residents had not been evacuated and civilian casualties were heavy, but no reliable total could be confirmed in the sources consulted. The clinic of the physician Han Shih-chuan took a direct hit and was then consumed by the fires started by the incendiaries; most of his family and staff reached an air-raid shelter in time, but his eldest daughter Shu-ying, aged 18, was killed, and he found her body in the rubble near the hospital the next morning. The family evacuated that evening to Benyuanliao on the outskirts.

The damage remains visible on preserved buildings such as the Hayashi Department Store and the former Prefecture Hall, both designated monuments that have been restored and reopened; the strafing scars on the department store's roof are shown to visitors. Han Shih-chuan's memoir 'Sixty Years of Recollections', which also exists in a Japanese edition, describes his daughter's death and is the most frequently cited testimony of the raid.