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After 1941, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor prompted retaliatory U.S. bombing raids that targeted Taiwan’s key munitions plants, power stations, rail and highway networks, and important offices. The Chushan Prefectural Office sat squarely between two mountains where the Jhuoshuei River enters the hills, serving as the forward point for strikes on the Jiji rail line and Sun Moon Lake hydro plant. When the air-raid siren—“electric thunder”—wailed, Japanese staff from the office and nearby dormitories sprinted for the air-raid shelter dug behind the building; its dense tree cover masked it from American planes. Today the shelter is obsolete and abandoned; six royal palms and a large phoenix tree now rise from it, turning the earthen cavity into a hide-and-seek den for local children. Beside it stand a Japanese-era dormitory and the old living quarters still used by officers of the present-day police precinct. The shelter’s entrance is a sliding, not a swinging, door: normally kept open, it could be slammed shut from the outside once the siren sounded. No one knew how many were already inside; over-crowding could cause suffocation, and pulling the door from without might force someone out—perhaps saving a life. Experience said more people died from asphyxiation than from bombs. Another theory holds that during a raid the blast pressure of bombs exploding outside would push the sliding door tight, blocking shock waves and shrapnel from entering.