Old Pictures of Taipei

I was trying to find Japanese era baseball fields when I came across areal surveillance photos taken by the Americans on April 1 1945, and June 17 1945 of the Prefecture governor building (today’s presidential palace).

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April 1 1945

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June 17 1945

The largest air strike against Taiwan, known as the Raid on Taipei, took place on May 31 1945. In the photo taken in June, the devastation is pretty clear. A section of the prefecture building collapsed. The area near the train station was utterly wiped out as well.

It was difficult to find evidence of Japanese era baseball fields in these areal surveillance photos, mostly because the Japanese either have converted the fields for military use, no one was maintaining the fields during war time, or the Americans bombed the crap out of these fields.

For example, Yuanshan baseball field (today’s Yuanshan Expo Dome, formerly Zhongshan football stadium) looked like this…

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The field was next to IJA barracks. You can see the L shaped spectator stands still intact. The barracks had pretty much been leveled, along with the field. You could hardly tell what was there before. There were also bomb craters across the road (today’s Zhongshan North Road).

In the before photo it was obvious that at the heights of the war, the Japanese built military structures over what was once the baseball field.

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Although Japanese maps showed there was a stadium at this location, no areal photos is available prior to the war, and immediately post war, the area became the base of US troops stationed in Taipei.

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Maps show this was a sports facility at one point.

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Photo taken in 1956, now the center piece of MAAG.

By 1965, the L shaped spectator stand was gone. Also some time prior to 1956, a baseball field popped up near this site. Before the end of the war the location of that baseball field was in the middle of rice paddies.

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According to the maps at the time, the field would have been inside the American naval base.

In the past I used to think the place remained a sports facility after the war, but I was wrong. The place became the MAAG base, and they only reconverted for a sports facility in 1989.

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This is not Taipei but Pingtung. They have an online museum with old photos now. All in Chinese, but cool. Three exhibitions to choose from. Great how they pin images on a map and on a timeline.

Enjoy!

http://digitalarchive.cultural.pthg.gov.tw/exhibitions

Just watched this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJOmGLQrhI

Nangang has changed a lot. Never been to the bottle cap factory. Will do so soon. :slight_smile:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYv7z3N2C8Y

Side by side comparison of 1958 and 2012 Taiwan

For the most part, less trees, uglier buildings

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Taiwan looked so nice in the 50s

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Which is just another way of saying Taiwan looked so nice under Japanese colonization, as the KMT literally did nothing besides killing local elites in the 50s.

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Maybe this has been posted before, I don’t know, but this just showed up in my Youtube.

The year before I first arrived here. I think the Tamsui Railway Line was closed shortly after that, was definitely not open any longer at the end of 1989, but I remember going to the platform of Tamsui Station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r7Pi2W-YpA

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Awesome!

I took that train out to Danshui a number of times before it shut down. It was pretty cool. The shopping district on Nanjing W. Rd. was originally built up around the train station there. It was more like a street market in those days, with lots of good stuff to eat.

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There was a train station at Nanjing W. Rd? Hard to imagine now.

Why, there’s a train station there now :slight_smile:

You mean Zhonghan MRT?

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I remember that :grinning:

those high school students would be in their 50s…

yeah or close to it
Kind of sad to think that way.
It looks about 1980 though

Pictures of Taiwanese Ita Thao and likely Rukai aboriginals taken by US navy Patrol Squadron 4, stationed at Naha Okinawa back in 1959.

Anyone could identify that church? @Dr_Milker perhaps?

Couldn’t find it. I’m guessing it’s either gone or rebuilt. The style seems similar to this one in 屏東禮納里部落.

image

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Residents of 禮納里 are Paiwan and Rukai peoples relocated from the Paridrayan village of Timur (三地門鄉大社部落), Makazayazaya village (瑪家鄉瑪家部落), and the Kucapungane village of Vedai (霧台鄉好茶部落). They were resettled there after the devastating Morakot typhoon 10 years ago. It is likely that church was located at their original villages.

Of the 3, the Paiwan village of Paridrayan fought the Japanese the hardest. Usually that means the Japanese would want to turn them into a model village afterwards.

The Rukai village of Kucapungane was forced relocated to their location before the typhoon in 1977. Their real original village is a national historic site and was first settled in 1310, and was recorded by the Dutch.

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image

Found this map of Japanese era churches. It’s based on a couple Japanese maps. I think we could only search them one by one to see which is the actual church in the image.

I came across this Dutch youtuber who worked at a trading company when he was younger, and visited much of Asia from the late 1930s all the way to the 80s. His videos on 1930s China and 1949 Hong Kong are pretty interesting.

He has a couple videos of his travels to Taiwan as well, mostly from the 80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-cLtKnN3Gg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSXWG2Mpu6A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp2zs6eJCR4

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