Bunkers part 2 of 3

The bunker was right there off the path. If fact, it was so close that a person could have reached out and dragged his hand across the rough cement surface as he walked past.

Once again, I found myself ahead of the group by a few minutes. (What are they doing back there? You know you could hike a whole lot faster if you wouldn’t talk to each other so much.)

But that was okay, it gave me just enough time to scope out the bunker. It was built into the peak of the mountain so that an occupant of the bunker could have an almost 360 degree view of the surrounding valley and any invading Japanese armies. Several posted notices said “Do not enter,” but I figured those were really more suggestions than hard and fast rules.

It wasn’t just a simple bunker. It was a small network of rooms that looked pretty much the way they must have looked seventy-five years ago. Coolest of all was that a tunnel lead from the bunker down the hill-side for forty meters until it terminated in a second bunker that was on the side of the mountain fifty feet lower than the first bunker. I snooped around a little and then hustle back up just in time to see my wife, sister, and the three girls walking up the path.

“Come, come,” I called to them. They are going to love this, I thought. I waved them over and showed them where to climb down into the bunker. Once they were in the bunker, I turned to the girls and said “Okay, go!” I didn’t tell them what to expect. I wanted them to have the joy of discovering it for themselves. Ten minutes later, they popped their heads out of the bunker. I made them tell me about everything they had seen. They were pretty excited.

We quickly discovered that there was a second tunnel headed in the opposite direction. We followed it. For the next hour and a half, we followed one tunnel after another and explored one underground bunker after another. The girls kept finding more passage ways and running down them.