Taipei Air Raid (Raid on Taipei)

The Taipei air raid of 31 May 1945 was the largest Allied air raid on Taiwan. B-24 Liberator heavy bombers of the US Fifth Air Force, based in the Philippines, bombed the city continuously from about 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The number of aircraft is given as 117 (English Wikipedia) or 118 in four groups (Chinese Wikipedia). English Wikipedia gives about 3,800 bombs; Chinese Wikipedia cites Fifth Air Force records of 310 tons dropped on Taipei.

The Governor-General's Office (now the Presidential Office Building) took direct hits and burned. Other damaged sites included Taihoku Station, the Bank of Taiwan, the Railway Hotel and the university hospital. In Wanhua the main hall and left corridor of Longshan Temple were destroyed, and in Dadaocheng the Horai-cho Catholic church (today's Immaculate Conception Cathedral) was almost completely destroyed. The death toll is disputed: a figure of more than 3,000 civilians is widely quoted, whereas the Government-General's own statistics recorded 759 deaths from air raids in Taihoku Prefecture for the whole of May 1945.

There is no dedicated public memorial. Unexploded bombs from the raid were found during construction work in 2009 and 2014, and civic groups have held small commemorations on 31 May.