There are many memorial sites in Taiwan commemorating those fallen in the battles against Japanese aggression during the colonial period from 1895 to 1945. Among them is the Taroko Battle Monument, located in the Taroko National Park in east Taiwan, which pays tribute to the brave Truku heroes who fought Japanese troops in 1914.

Designed by a local Truku artisan, the monument is topped with an eye-shaped structure, and its shaft is composed of 22 spheres, representing that 22 tribes of the Truku people united as one in the battle. At the bottom, a marble board records the courageous but tragic deeds of all fighters.

From June 10 to July 30, 1914, around 2,350 local residents picked up their arrows, spears and machetes, and resisted a numerically superior Japanese force of nearly 21,000. They lured the enemy deep into the forest, set traps and shot them as archers. During the battle, the Truku people killed 122 Japanese troops and left 254 wounded, including the then Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan Sakuma Samata, who was seriously wounded and died half a year later. However, under the barrage of advanced weapons, most Truku fighters sacrificed their lives and only very few of them survived.

The Taroko Battle was the largest operation launched by the Japanese colonial authorities to suppress the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. In memory of those fallen Truku people, the Taroko Battle Monument was built in 2014 to forever memorialize their heroic deeds and remind people to never forget the brutal history of Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule.