Taroko (Truku) War Site

The Taroko (Truku) War of 1914 was the largest single military campaign conducted during Japan's colonial rule of Taiwan (1895–1945). Fought between May 17 and August 28, 1914, in the mountainous terrain of present-day Xiulin Township, Hualien County, the conflict pitted the full might of the colonial military apparatus against the Truku (Taroko) indigenous people, who had long resisted Japanese encroachment into their ancestral lands in the Taroko Gorge region.

The campaign was the culmination of Japan's "Five-Year Pacification Plan" (五年理蕃計畫), a systematic strategy to bring all of Taiwan's indigenous populations under complete colonial control. Governor-General Sakuma Samata personally commanded the operation, mobilizing a force for which sources give differing totals — about 6,200 soldiers and police (over 11,000 with labourers) by one count, and more than 20,000 by others — equipped with 31 artillery pieces, 8 machine guns, and some 2,800 rifles, against roughly 2,000–3,000 Truku fighting men. The Japanese forces advanced along multiple routes into the steep gorge terrain, employing scorched-earth tactics including burning villages and destroying crops.

Fighting opened on May 30, 1914, when army troops attacked the Batoran settlements; the police columns advanced from the Hualien side the following day. Fighting was fierce in the narrow gorges and dense mountain forests, where the Truku warriors used their intimate knowledge of the terrain to mount effective resistance. Governor-General Sakuma himself was injured in a fall from a cliff while inspecting the front on June 26. By early July, Truku leader Holok Naowi (ハルク・ナウイ) surrendered, though mopping-up operations continued until late August. Japanese casualties numbered approximately 364 killed and wounded, while Truku casualties went largely unrecorded.

In the aftermath of the war, the Japanese colonial government forcibly relocated many Truku communities from their mountain homeland to lowland areas, deliberately scattering them among Han Taiwanese settlements to undermine their social structure and traditional culture. The military roads carved through the gorge during the campaign later formed the basis of the modern Taroko Gorge highway system. In 1937, the area was designated as part of the Tsugitaka-Taroko National Park (次高タロコ國立公園), one of Japan's colonial-era national parks in Taiwan.

Today, the Taroko Gorge area within Taroko National Park preserves numerous traces of the 1914 campaign, including remnants of Japanese military roads, fortification sites, and patrol trails. The Zhuilu Old Trail (錐麓古道), a cliff-face police road cut by the colonial authorities after the campaign ended, is one of the most well-known surviving examples of these colonial-era routes. The site serves as a powerful memorial to the Truku people's resistance and the profound impact of Japan's colonial pacification campaigns on Taiwan's indigenous populations.