Sunday, March 24, 2013

Happiness Cave: A thoroughly minor historical site

Riding along in Shihgang east of Fengyuan the other day, I followed a recently created bike path and zoomed past this cave. I'd noticed it before, but always ignored it.

The sign said DO NOT ENTER. Normally I regard that as an invitation but in this case the stink of urine was so powerful I declined to practice fine American art of trespass.

The sign said that the cave had been used to store aircraft parts during the Japanese period. I queried the awesome Wei-bin over at the Taiwan Airpower blog, who opined that the cave and the road serving it were too small for that purpose.

The cave is located under a large temple (Google maps). Perhaps the Japanese stashed things there because they thought the Allies wouldn't bomb the temple, though, as Wei-bin pointed out, the Americans probably couldn't have seen such a tiny cave from the air anyway.

Extra points if you can identify which Japanese airfield it might be related to.
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