Coconut Bunker Introduction
After 1941, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor prompted the U.S. military to begin retaliatory bombings, targeting important military supply factories, power plants, railroads, and key offices in Taiwan. The Zhushan District Office was situated between two mountains at the mouth of the Zhuoshui River, serving as a forward base for the bombardment of the Jiji Railway and Sun Moon Lake Reservoir. When the "electric thunder" sounded, employees of the district office and Japanese residents nearby rushed to hide in bomb shelters, while the shelters behind the district office, surrounded by dense forestation, provided cover from American aircraft. The current bomb shelters have lost their function and are abandoned, with six tall King Palms and Phoenix Trees now growing on top, turning into earth mounds for children to play hide-and-seek. Next to the shelters are the old lodgings from the Japanese colonial period, along with the current police precinct's old dormitory. The entrance design of the bomb shelter was a pull door rather than a push door; this was because the shelter doors opened outward normally, and when the electric thunder sounded, everyone rushed in. The actual number of people taking refuge inside was unknown, and overcrowding could lead to suffocation. The design of pulling the door from outside also allowed for the possibility that those inside could be pushed out to survive, based on the experience indicating that more people might die from suffocation than from bombing. Another theory suggests that during bombings, the pressure from explosions outside could force the pull door to withstand blast pressure and shrapnel from coming inside.
