Análisis y clasificación de las ARPSIs basado en su peligrosidad y su

As an island the natural settings of Quemoy predetermined its inside and outside demarcation along the coastline, and the defense system established after the reversal further consolidated the spatial demarcation. Due to the small size of Quemoy, a major purpose of the defense deployment was to bog down the invading enemies and logistical communication. The military deployment therefore formed defense lines encompassing the QDH inside in a hierarchical order. The arrangement produced internal layers of the structural defense network, and consequently highlighted the inside of Quemoy.

3.2.1 Reformulation of the Overall Configuration

The application of multiple layers of defense on Quemoy was a novel praxis in the modern times. Previously defense forces concentrated on the coastline to form a single and strong front line. Implementation of the modern strategy gave prominence to the inside as the core of the defense system, and spurred development inside Quemoy. The Taiwu Range as the spine of the island stretched from central Quemoy to the island’s eastern end, and divided its eastern half into two quarters. Headquarters of the Eastern Quemoy Division were to the east while headquarters of the Southern Quemoy (aka Nanxiong 南雄) Division occupied the southern flank of the range. Formerly, the

headquarters of the Central Quemoy Division was on the west end of the range before the military reorganization in 1984. Surrounded by these division headquarters was the QDH in the middle of the range. Situated on the southern hillsides of the range the command centers were protected from shelling, and their concentration drew clusters of military facilities, infrastructure installations, and administrative personnel to the highlands.

Due to the defense buildup, the barren, rocky area that had thitherto remained

underdeveloped turned into the political center of Quemoy, and usurped the role formerly played by southwestern Quemoy from 1387. In addition, militarization of Quemoy also influenced the pre-existing economic structure. Before formation of the defense system in the 1950s, the port cities, Hopu, in southwestern Quemoy was the major economic center because it served as the point of attachment for the prosperous treaty port, Amoy, which served west Quemoy. As Quemoy’s economy increasingly relied on the military after militarization, the economic center of Quemoy accordingly moved to the area with military concentration. Eastern Quemoy, with the three divisions of defense forces and the garrison of the DQH, accommodated a great proportion of the total troops in the

island. The large military population therein shifted the economic center from the

southwest to the new town, Xinshi 新市, in southeastern Quemoy. The relocation of the economic center then synchronized with the change of the insular front and back, and the new economic center happened to be on the right (east) side of the new orientation. With the shifts of front and back as well as left and right, the modern precept of military defense brought forth an innovative configuration of Quemoy. These landscape changes induced by militarization thereby presented the reversed geographical coordinate system.

3.2.2 Development of the Underground Inside

When war consisted of intensive bombardments from 1954 to 1960, the garrison in Quemoy modified their defenses in response to the new type of warfare. Construction of semi-underground and underground defenses supplemented soldiers’ regular duties, and their endeavors to transfer the military facilities underground created another dimension of inside Quemoy. The most representative work of the sort was the DQH in Mt. Taiwu, where the military took advantage of its granitic geology as the natural air-raid shelter.

The military moved all critical military facilities, ranging from small ammunition depots to the wartime command center with nearly eight-hundred seats into these granitic caves underground, and thereby constructed an underground labyrinth with few entrances in the mountain valleys. Numerous underground tunnels connected the excavated caves at different depths, and the subterranean thoroughfares penetrating though the mountain served as the routes for tank troops. Consequently, the militarization of Mt. Taiwu formed a network linking up the division headquarters around the hilly area with the DQH. While the QDH ordinarily collected its forces in the underground chambers, the tunnel network inside Mt. Taiwu enabled these forces to effectively reach out as reinforcements. Due to the advantages of defense and incompatibility with agricultural

use, the area of Mt. Taiwu that had largely remained undeveloped before militarization became the ideal site for military facilities.

In addition to Mt. Taiwu, the military also constructed underground facilities in the low hills on the outer rings of the multi-layered defense system. Since rocky hills were mostly undeveloped land outside villages, these strategic highlands became preferable sites for military stations, which consisted partly of underground structures.

Their prevalence in Quemoy reached an extent that, as Huang commended, “in the early 1960s, as long as the military stations were built in the granitic terrain, there were constructions of underground tunnels in the bedrock in process” (2003, 93). Apart from infantry stations, artillery positions were one of the common facilities taking advantage of the bedrock-exposed hills in Quemoy. Entrances of these underground facilities were generally on the inside behind the hills, while gun embrasures aiming toward the

mainland were dispersed on the outside of the hills. Branched shaped tunnels connected the entrances and the underground gun emplacement chambers (Figure 3.15). By the design, only the gun emplacements were exposed to the threat of enemy fire, which if hit through an embrasure would only cost a gun emplacement on a branch of the position.

The design therefore maximized the defense effects, and minimized the risk from enemy fire. Like artillery positions, landing sites for supplies on the south shore where the materiel arrived were the other target of enemy fire. To ensure successful delivery, the military embarked on the construction of underground docks (Figure 3.16), so that the carrying vessels (LCM or LCVP) could transport supplies from their mother ships to the docks in the granitic caves. From there, the garrison then moved supplies through series of stairways to the grounds behind the hills on the inside of the island. These facilities in the granitic terrain, due to their essential function, attracted converging enemy fire, and

Fig. 3.15. An Artillery Tunnel. The entrance of the artillery tunnel is constantly on the inside behind the hill while its gun-emplacement chambers on the outside rim of the hillfoot. The curvy main

(communication) tunnel and its sub-tunnels stretching outward connect the entrance and the peripheral gun-emplacement chambers. Both the curvy tunnel design and the tree-shape layout can reduce the impact and damage by the blast of retaliatory fire. [photo by the author]

Figure 3.16. An Underground Dock for Carrying Vessels. A long stairway connects the underground tunnel to the ground facilities behind the coastal hill. The tunnel can harbor sixty-eight small carrying vessels (LCVP) to unload the supply along the A-shape layout of the channels. Due to the resonant effect in the tunnel, KNP has held a few concerts of classic music therein with the band playing on a barge drifting along the water channel. [Source: photo by the author]

therefore required well fortified positions to withstand the shelling. The endeavor to excavate and mold the granitic caves and tunnels into military use not only created a series of impregnable strongholds but popular tourist attractions after demilitarization due to their ingenuity and sublimity in construction.

In contrast to the military facilities in the rocky hills that took advantage of the protective granitic chambers, installations located in other geological settings, mainly laterite, resorted to the thick reinforced concrete walls to withstand shellings. The military compounds in the areas of earthen hills were usually a combination of tunnels,

communication trenches, semi-underground bunkers, and aboveground structures with camouflage. Their layout in the compound closely collaborated with the topography, and important structures were often partially embedded in or covered with earth.

Application of the same defense measures also occurred in the civilian domain. After the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, construction of public air-raid shelters initiated the underground facilities for folk villages. Subsequently, the development of underground facilities coincided with the organization of combat villages, by which the military turned the folk villages into quasi-military compounds. A combat village as the basic tactical unit of civil defense consisted of a few small folk villages or a large single one. In these villages, tunnels connected air-raid shelters, folk houses, public buildings, and bunkers on the periphery of villages to form an underground network that enabled the efficient maneuvering of the militia defending their own villages, while providing shelters for the non-combat personnel. For this purpose, the military further commanded the militia to excavate underground command centers, weapon caches, food storage, and wells to sustain the militia in a long-term defense. Consequently, if enemy troops intended to capture a combat village, they would have to break through the defenses on the periphery

of the village; pacify the resistance in the streets inside the village; and eradicate the reserves underground. The combat village thereby comprised three layers of defenses supporting each other (Dong and Hung 2007). Through the underground tunnels, the militia could synchronically support the two other battle venues in the streets inside the village and on the village borders. The underground structures by linking up with the two other defense deployments considerably enhanced the defensive strength of the combat villages. These underground facilities were essentially the hard-core defenses of the villages. With the development of civil defense, the spatial demarcations of the civilian domain appeared, especially when the multi-layered defenses clearly separated the inside and outside on the ground and created another dimension of the deep inside of the folk villages underground. Militarization of the civilian domain thus consolidated the spatial prepositions by the twofold inside.