30-Second Overview: In 2025, the Ministry of the Interior announced that Taiwan has over 82,000 air raid shelters, with a capacity for approximately 54 million people. In 2022, Reuters entered Taipei’s underground malls and parking lots, observing how a city temporarily rewrites its daily spaces into shelter routes. Eighteen-year-old Harmony Wu practices dancing near an MRT station and learns for the first time that the underground streets beneath her feet could become shelters during wartime. The numbers are reassuring, yet they fail to answer the most bodily question: When the siren sounds, where do I go?

A History from Air Raid Bunkers to Basements

Taiwan’s current air raid shelter system cannot be understood solely through mobile apps or underground parking lots. Its predecessor lies in the air defense organizations and bunkers established during the Japanese colonial period due to wartime mobilization. The Taiwan History Museum notes that because Taiwan served as a base for Japan’s southward expansion policy, it became a key target for Allied air raids during World War II; the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office issued the Rules for the Construction of Simple Air Raid Bunkers on July 13, 1941, regulating the form, area, location, materials, capacity, and evacuation procedures for air raids. ¹

This history reveals that air raid sheltering was never just about “digging a hole.” It simultaneously involved building specifications, population allocation, alarms, evacuation, supplies, and local organization. Wartime shelter spaces were not provided unilaterally by the state but were constructed jointly by government agencies, schools, factories, associations, residents, and local organizations, forming a governance model that decentralizes war responsibilities into everyday society. ¹

The air raids at the end of World War II later became the starting point for overlapping memories across different generations. Curatorial data from the National Cultural Heritage Database indicates that post-war Taiwan held two distinct types of air raid memories: the local residents’ memory of experiencing Allied bombing in the 1940s, and the anti-war memory centered on Japanese bombing of Chinese cities brought by those who migrated to Taiwan with the government after 1949. Both discuss air raids, yet they hold different understandings of the enemy, victims, and national narratives. ²

Therefore, air raid bunkers are not merely concrete and earthworks; they are also spaces of memory politics. When elders say “go to the air raid,” they may refer to hiding in bunkers during alarms in the Japanese colonial period, or to participating in Air Defense Day and civil defense training under anti-communist propaganda in the post-war era. If we view air raid bunkers only as old buildings, we miss how they carry Taiwan’s evolution from colonial rule, post-war reception, Cold War mobilization, to a democratized society.

After the government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, the military standoff across the strait prevented the air defense system from disappearing with the end of the war. Records from the Taiwan History Museum show that in 1950, the Ministry of National Defense’s Air Defense Command convened Taiwan Province’s first protection conference and promoted the construction, numbering, capacity registration, shelter certificates, and bunker chief system of air raid bunkers according to the Measures for the Construction of Air Raid Bunkers in Counties and Cities of Taiwan Province. In 1955, the government even advocated “one bunker per person,” designing simple air raid pits with different materials and capacities; in 1958, in response to imaginaries of nuclear weapons, simple atomic protection pits and atomic protection rooms appeared. ¹

These measures reflect two characteristics of Cold War civil defense. First, shelter facilities must be widely dispersed, relying not on a few large public buildings; second, the government incorporated residents’ homes, courtyards, roadside empty spaces, and local society into the protection network. Air raid sheltering thus became not just a military matter, but a daily task shared by families, factories, schools, villages, and cities.

Post-war air defense education also entered society through “Air Defense Day” and promotional activities. Curatorial data from the Ministry of Culture records that as early as 1940, there were proposals to establish Air Defense Day; after 1949, the government strengthened air defense education in Taiwan; starting in 1951, promotional formats included lectures, essay competitions, exhibitions, propaganda vehicles, and airdropped leaflets. The Wan’an Exercises, implemented starting in 1978, fixed joint military-civilian alarms, pedestrian and vehicle evacuation, and traffic control into a system visible to all citizens. ²

However, Air Defense Day did not always maintain the same social weight. Ministry of Culture data indicates that after the 1970s, with changes in international and cross-strait situations, Air Defense Day and related activities gradually shrank; the Wan’an Exercises remained, but their meaning slowly shifted from daily wartime education for all citizens to an annual fixed urban control event. ² This transition explains today’s gap: the systems and signs remain, yet many residents have lost the historical understanding and usage methods for them.

A 2007 study in the Journal of National Defense on whole-people joint defense also showed that the concept of civil defense had gradually shifted from passive “civil air defense” to “civil defense,” “air raid protection,” and “wartime support for military duties.” The study viewed intelligence transmission, alarm distribution, air raid evacuation, air raid disaster protection, local public security, disaster relief, and organizational training as a single system. ³ This shift means that modern air raid sheltering cannot merely pursue the quantity of underground space; it must also consider how alarms, rescue, communication, supplies, medical care, and local governance interlock.

Capacity on the Map, and Entrances Underfoot

In August 2022, Reuters documented over 4,600 air raid shelters in Taipei, claiming a capacity for approximately 12 million people; most were not dedicated bunkers, but underground parking lots, the MRT system, and underground malls. Eighteen-year-old Harmony Wu practices dancing in an underground street, only to learn that this familiar daily space changes its purpose during wartime. ⁴

In April 2025, the National Police Agency stated that the networking of over 82,000 air raid shelters across Taiwan was complete, with a total capacity of approximately 54 million people. Citizens can use the Police Service App to enable positioning, select points, and navigate, or pre-save screenshots or offline maps in case of network interruption. ⁵

Because maps answer “where is a point,” not “can I reach that point after the alarm.” A shelter marked on the third underground floor is never the same distance for someone familiar with elevators, stairs, access controls, and exits, as it is for someone pushing a stroller, using a wheelchair, accompanying young children, or unable to hear the alarm.

A System, How to Turn Basements into Public Responsibility

Taiwan’s air raid sheltering is not a temporary patchwork. The National Police Agency designed the Air Raid Shelter App so that citizens can familiarize themselves with nearby locations in peacetime and find places to go during wartime; this tool transforms shelters from administrative data into routes residents can pre-confirm in their daily lives. ⁶

What the system truly needs to address is whether facility quantity, allocation, capacity, and evacuation directions can be grasped. Public Television (PTS) organized current system data indicating that since 1974, designated buildings in densely populated or high-risk air raid areas must include air raid shelter equipment; after building completion, data must be submitted to police agencies for review and filing. ⁷ The Legislative Yuan’s Legal Affairs Bureau organized current legal frameworks, indicating that air raid sheltering is simultaneously governed by civil defense and building management regulations; police agencies are responsible for filing, while building owners and users bear responsibility for maintaining legal use and equipment safety. ⁸

But between “filing” and “usability” lies a management issue easily ignored in peacetime. Many facilities are located in building basements, inaccessible without the owner’s consent in peacetime; they are only opened for shelter during air raid exercises, war, or管制 evacuation orders. ⁸

Beyond Three Minutes, Is There a Second Route?

In June 2025, Reuters reported that Taiwan is preparing to update air raid guidelines, partly because high-rise residents in metropolitan areas may not be able to reach designated shelters within three minutes. New guidelines incorporate scenarios such as being unable to enter shelters in time or driving, reminding people to seek cover behind at least two walls, crouch low, and slightly open their mouths when immediate shelter is impossible. ⁹

Shelters are certainly important, but cities do not automatically empty when sirens sound; people may be on buses, in elevators, in kitchens on the seventeenth floor, in old apartments without basements, or crossing a street without clear signage while holding a child’s hand. In 2022, Reuters also noted that while laws required shelters to remain clean and open, they did not require pre-stored food and water. ⁴

The National Land Management Agency’s 2026 revised direction for Building Technical Rules will raise the calculation baseline for some spaces from 0.75 square meters per person to 1 square meter, and add requirements for smoke shielding, ventilation, lighting, washrooms, and emergency power outlets. ¹⁰

Walking Back from Shelters to Communities

Analysis from East Asia Forum suggests that Taiwan’s civil defense has recently increased shelters and volunteers, but is still affected by unclear tasks, insufficient training, policy supervision, and funding limits. If crises require evacuation, order maintenance, medical aid, and disaster response, relying solely on top-down commands is not enough to accomplish this. ¹¹

Therefore, air raid sheltering should not be guarded separately by police and building management agencies. The Ministry of the Interior’s promoted community self-disaster prevention has expanded the target audience for disaster prevention officer training to include foreign migrant workers, religious groups, apartment building management committees, taxi drivers, and village workers. ¹²

Exercises Test Not Obedience, but Friction

The 2026 Urban Resilience Air Raid Exercise adopts a pre-warning, phased, and time-differentiated approach, arranging drills for alarm transmission, evacuation, traffic control, disaster rescue, and mobile communication network obstruction. ¹³ This pushes air raid sheltering from “where people should go” to “how government and residents still know the next step without stable networks.”

The value of network-cutting drills lies in forcing the city to acknowledge that apps are not the only public infrastructure. Paper signs, broadcasts, neighborhood notifications, community management offices, and on-site guides must all take over when phones cannot locate positions.

Accessibility Is Not an Afterthought

The National Land Management Agency’s explanation regarding air raid shelters and accessible pathways indicates that current building codes have clear scopes for which spaces must be accessible via accessible pathways; meanwhile, competent authorities, based on aging and all-age usage, recommend accessible elevators reaching each floor and consider suitable indoor pathways. ¹⁴

The legal scope of accessibility may not fully align with whether a person can safely reach shelter space during wartime. Shelter planning must still include slope, thresholds, elevator power outages, alternative routes, companions, and toilets in on-site checks; otherwise, “having a shelter” may remain merely an inaccessible point on a map for those with mobility impairments.

On days when alarms do not sound, the city can still do one small thing: walk the nearest shelter route with family, recognize that yellow sign, remember alternative directions without relying on the network, and ask managers if the basement is truly usable. The true shelter map should include these people, not just those coordinates.

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