In early August 1945 World War II was far from over. Months and even years of fighting were still in the future of Japan and the United States as the Americans and their allies made amphibious assaults on the Japanese Home Islands that would have dwarfed Normandy.

While American forces in theater made their preparations and troops who’d been victorious in Europe were being redeployed and prepared to take part in the Pacific War’s final phase, the Japanese military was preparing as well. The entire populace was being readied to fight, 10,000 kamikazes and 3,000 of their seaborne counterparts were in position to strike and defensive pillboxes, bunkers and batteries were being built throughout the country.

One of those preparations was a mostly complete bunker complex near the small village of Matsushiro that, if completed and used as intended, could have affected the course of the war, regardless of the atomic bombs.

The Matsushiro Daihonei, or Imperial General Headquarters, was built as an alternative command center the Japanese war efforts could be directed from after the Allies invaded Japan. It would house not only military leadership but the civil government, NHK for broadcast and communications and the Emperor himself. Located in the landlocked Nagano prefecture far from Tokyo and built under solid rock, the headquarters would be difficult for the Allies to march on and just as difficult to bomb even with British Tallboy earthquake bombs. After the surrender the complex was mostly abandoned except for a weather station and closed off until a portion was reopened in 1985 as a tourist attraction.

Preserved World War II sites and artifacts aren’t very common in Japan and reading about the Matsushiro bunker intrigued me. I’d visited plenty of Allied bunkers and defensive fortifications but never a Japanese one bigger than a large room. Once in Japan, getting to Matsushiro would take some doing for the same reasons the bunker was put there in 1944, it was distant from Tokyo but thanks to the 1998 Winter Olympics a Shinkansen “bullet train” now made getting to Nagano City a breeze. From there I could switch to a local line and be at Matsushiro, now a neighborhood of Nagano City, ten minutes later. My biggest worry was what would be waiting for me at the bunker.

The only Japanese World War II museum or site I’d visited before was the Yushukan, the Imperial war museum at the Yasakuni Shrine. It housed many impressive artifacts ranging from small arms to artillery, aircraft and a fully restored tank but it’s wartime narrative was very “creative” in its interpretation. They explained that the war was defensive in nature against imperialistic Western oppressors even as Japan had been forced to ‘forage’ for resources and tried to unite Asia under it’s ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere.’ It would be a shame if I travelled all the way to Matsushiro just to be blasted with more jingoistic revisionist history, but nothing online said anything about the bunker’s politics.

The Shinkansen ride went as planned but arriving at Nagano City I learned that Matsushiro has not warranted a local train stop since 2012. I thought that strange since it seemed every city in Japan, no matter how small or unimportant, was connected by train. What does a village have to do to get off that grid? Return to the feudal Edo era?

The answer is pretty much ‘yes.’ Matsushiro is the village time forgot. Before the 1868 Meiji Restoration did away with the shogunate, Matsushiro was the center of its own eponymous domain, home of the powerful Sanada Clan, their retainers and army of samurai. I didn’t need to be a history major to know that, as the former village is still composed of Edo-esque streets lined with samurai houses and houses trying to look like samurai houses. Everywhere the distinctive six-coined Sanada Clan mon (crest) still flies proudly on banners and is borne on buildings, signs and lantern-like street lights. As it was a once a castle town they’ve even rebuilt the castle.

Being this old-fashioned made me think of the Yushukan again and didn’t alleviate my concerns it would be any different, but there wasn’t a chance I’d turn back after coming so far.

Walking to the bunker theoretically took twenty minutes from the abandoned train station / active bus stop I started at, but with the volume of preserved houses, temples and museums I saw along the way it took over an hour to get there. Travelling with Dave, we surprised a few of the museum attendants, one of which explained to him that they rarely get Western tourists in Matsushiro and most people just visit for the hot springs.

We eventually got to the bunker and it’s museum, an unassuming pair of trailers parked near the covered tunnel entrance. As well as finding the bunker, which is a little out of the way even in Matsushiro, I also found that it wasn’t run by right wing nationalist but quite the opposite. Besides the tunnel entrance was an obelisk and a chain of multi-colored paper cranes, a memorial to the many Koreans who died building the bunker. A sign explained that the bunker’s historical remains “call attention to the Japanese invasion of Asian countries, as seen in World War II and the colonization of Korea.”

Mount Zozan has six kilometers of finished tunnels but only half a kilometer is open. That half kilometer is enough as there really isn’t anything to see down there as it was never put to use. There are no rooms to preserve or recreate, the only finished and furnished rooms were the Emperor’s in what’s now the observatory on Mount Maizuru. The only item I saw inside Mount Zozan is at the very end of the tunnel, when chain-link fencing blocked off all possibly routes but back. Tied to the fence was a chain of colorful origami paper cranes, just like the ones at the memorial outside.

Moving through those empty tunnels left time to think and reflect. A lot of people died building this place and if it had been used as intended, housing the military and government after Tokyo fell, those numbers would have been nothing compared to the death toll that would have followed.

Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan, was to begin in November 1945. It’s first part, Operation Olympic , was the invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s home islands. Following it’s capture Kyushu would be used as a staging area for the second part of Downfall, Operation Coronet, in which American and Allied troops would land on Honshu, invade the Kanto Plain and take Tokyo. If all went to plan the war would be over by 1947.

Japan had five million troops on the home islands and a population of seventy million, almost all of whom could be expected to fight. In June 1945 all men 15-60 and women 17-40 were conscripted into military service to be used as guerillas or as part of militias that would face the Americans with improvised weapons, bamboo spears and suicide attacks. It would be national suicide, or as a popular slogan of the day put it, “The shattering of the hundred million, like a beautiful jewel.”

According to the July 1945 Shockley-Wright War Department Report, Japanese casualties would be at least 5-10 million dead. American casualties were expected to run between 1.7-4 million with 400,000-800,000 dead. Enough Purple Hearts were minted in preparation for this invasion that they are still being issued today.

After walking the tunnel I visited the small museum set off to the side of the entrance. As modest inside as it is on the outside, it contained artifacts from construction and maps, diagrams and aerial photographs of the area.

The museum’s official name is the “Memorial Center for Another History in Matsushiro.” The docent gave us a tour and explained to Dave in Japanese that the current building is temporary. The memorial association possesses the remains of the local ianfu or comfort women house and their goal is rebuilding it here and move the museum inside of it to better make it a place to talk about Japan’s war crimes and human rights. That was definitely not what I was expecting on the trip up.

Comfort women were women forced into prostitutes for the Japanese military. Mostly teenage Koreans, many had signed up to be nurses or to work in defense factories and others abducted from their homes. It’s significant that this place would even broach the subject as the Japanese government’s acknowledgement of forcing 200,000 women into sexual slavery and what it’s legal responsibilities are for having done so is controversial.

Having dropped that surprise on us, the docent then went and took us through a tamer discussion about the bunker’s construction, purpose, casualties and why the Emperor never moved in.

Though about 20% of the complex was still awaiting completion in August 1945, the rooms meant to house Emperor Hirohito, his family and Imperial regalia had been ready for occupation for months, but the Emperor refused. He believed that allowing himself to be hidden away in a military bunker far from Tokyo would weaken his authority and allow the military to rule without him. This is important as it was the Emperor who made the decision to surrender on August 15, 1945. Though the divine Emperor had made his decision, it was not unanimously agreed upon by members of the military.

Knowing that the Emperor intended to ask Japan to ‘endure the unendurable’ a group of military officers set a plan into motion to stop him. They would seize the Emperor, destroy the surrender recordings and take total control of the government and military in order to prosecute the war until it ended on their terms. Though the attempt to stop the Emperor himself was nearly unprecedented, it wouldn’t be the first time Japanese military officers plotted against the Imperial family if they could not have the war they desired. In 1941 officers had also planned to assassinate Prince Fumimaro Kanoye if he had been able to secure a meeting with President Roosevelt to possibly stave off the war before it began.

To gain access to the Imperial Palace the conspirators murdered the commander of the Emperor’s guards when he refused to cooperate and using his seal forged orders that would isolate the Emperor and the palace. Even with those measures, they were unable to find the surrender recording or garner support for their attempted coup. At the same time another group, loosely associated with the conspirators, was also unable to assassinate the prime minister.

Had the Emperor been sequestered at Matsushiro all of those dramatics may have been unnecessary. If he’d been there instead of Tokyo he could have either been kept uninformed or the consideration of surrender never brought before him as the military continued in its preparations for coming invasion. It’s a big “What If” but one I’m thankful is merely that and nothing more.

Physically a visit to Matsushiro Daihonei amounts to going down an unfinished hole in the ground tucked away in a rural corner of Japan not worth connecting to the rest of the nation by train. Fitting as it’s a reminder of things most people there would rather forget but like with any artifact, what it is, is oft less important that what it represents and the story it has to tell. Matsushiro’s was definitely one worth taking the time to listen to.

A memorial to the Koreans who died building the bunker. The exact number is unknown but different books cite 1,000-1,500 and the local handout claims it could have been as high as 7,000.

References for this article:
Defense of Japan (Fortress #99) by Steven J. Zaloga (Matsushiro Daihonei)
Hell to Pay by D.M. Giangreco (Operation Downfall)
Memorial Center of Another History in Matsushiro pamphlet
Nomonhan 1939 by Stuart D. Goldman (Conspiracy against Prince Konoye)
War in the Pacific Vol. I by Jerome T. Hagen (Coup)
War in the Pacific Vol. I by Jerome T. Hagen (Comfort Women)
War in the Pacific Vol. V by Jerome T. Hagen (Operation Downfall)
http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur%20Reports/MacArthur%20V1/ch13.htm (Operation Downfall)

Previously published in “Remembrance.”