Coconut Bunker Introduction
After 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor prompted the U.S. military to begin retaliatory bombings, targeting important military supply factories, power plants, railways, and significant administrative offices in Taiwan. The Zhushan District Office was located between the two mountains where the Zhuoshui River enters the mountains, serving as a forward base for the bombings of the Jiji Railway and Sun Moon Lake Reservoir. When the "air raid siren" sounded, the staff of the district office and Japanese military and civilians in the nearby dormitories desperately ran to hide in the air raid shelter. Behind the district office, the air raid shelter was well-hidden among dense tree cover, providing concealment from U.S. aircraft. The current air raid shelter has lost its function and has been abandoned, with six tall coconut trees and phoenix trees now growing on it, turning it into a place for children to play hide and seek. Next to the shelter are the old dormitories from the Japanese colonial era and the current police station's old lodging quarters. The design of the shelter's entrance was to pull the door, rather than push it in, because the door opened outward in normal times. When the air raid siren sounded, everyone rushed inside, and it was unknown how many people were actually hiding within the shelter. If too many people were crammed inside, there was a risk of suffocation. The design allowed the door to be pulled from the outside, giving people inside a chance to escape rather than being pushed out and potentially surviving. The risk design was based on experience indicating that deaths from suffocation could be more likely than deaths from bombings. Another theory states that during bombings, the pressure from explosions outside the shelter could cause the pulled door to block the blast and debris from entering.
