Dahun Police Garrison

The largest and most heavily defended of the Japanese colonial era police garrisons along the Batongguan Traversing Trail (八通關越道路) in Zhuoxi, Hualien, known in its day as the “Eastern Capital” (東段首都). First established in 1911 in the remote upper reaches of the Lakulaku River (拉庫拉庫溪) valley, it was overrun and burned in the Dahun Incident (大分事件) of 1915, a Bunun (布農族) uprising that killed its entire police detachment. Rebuilt in 1920 on a higher terrace, it grew into a small Japanese settlement under an assistant inspector, with a school, a trading post, a sericulture station, and a martial arts hall (武德殿), its approaches covered by the guns of Huabanuo Fort. By the late 1930s the area’s Bunun had been almost entirely dislocated to lowland settlements under the watchful eye of the colonial authorities, and the post was abolished in 1944.

The buildings served as a forestry conservation station and sheltered returning Bunun families after the war, until a fire razed the last of them in 1992. The garrison occupied a set of stepped terraces, and stone foundations, stairways, and gateposts can still be found among them, together with the reinforced-concrete armory that held its weapons and ammunition behind thick stone walls. A monument to the Dahun Incident stands near the original site. Yushan National Park added a solar-powered research cabin on the lowest terrace in 2002, now used by climbers and black bear researchers.