Site of Air Defense Command Center
During World War II, the Imperial Army built a heavily fortified concrete bunker here to house one of the country’s few Air Defense Command Centers. From here, the army coordinated defenses against American air raids and broadcasted air-raid warnings to the surrounding area. The bunker was an impressive structure. Its outer concrete walls were over a meter thick, and it contained four floors, including a basement. Young women and girls, many of them high school students, worked as radio operators at the Air Defense Command Center. The command center survived the war, but it was dismantled a quarter-century later as part of Osaka’s preparation to host the Expo ’70 World’s Fair. Today, Japan’s only remaining Air Defense Command Center is located in Hiroshima, where it withstood the atomic bombing in 1945.