WWII Air Raid Shelter
WWII Air Raid Shelter stands beneath the former Dusit Zoo in Bangkok, offering a direct view of wartime architecture. The rectangular underground room measures ten metres long, four metres wide, and two metres high. Thai authorities built this concrete refuge after Japan invaded Thailand in December 1941, when Japanese troops crossed the country towards British-held territories. Its purpose was to protect Bangkok residents from possible Allied bombing raids during the Second World War.
After the war, the underground space became part of an exhibition about the conflict’s effect on local people. Statues show a family crouching together, including a woman holding a baby. The surrounding Dusit Zoo began as King Chulalongkorn’s royal garden before becoming a public zoo in 1938. It closed in 2018, leaving the shelter among Bangkok’s few remaining wartime relics.
Many other traces disappeared beneath urban development, while this room still preserves a tangible connection with civilian life during the war. The family sculpture remains its most immediate detail: a mother holds her baby as the figures huddle underground.
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