World Anti-Fascist War Memorial Park (Japanese Fortifications)

The Hailar fortification complex, built by the Japanese Kwantung Army in the late 1930s, is one of the most substantial underground military works ever constructed in Inner Mongolia. The network of tunnels, bunkers, gun emplacements, and command centres extends for over twelve kilometres underground, large enough to shelter thousands of troops and to hold out for extended periods without surface resupply. The memorial park has been established around the partially excavated site, with a substantial museum documenting the Japanese occupation of the region.

The museum's exhibits are strongly patriotic in framing — this is a Chinese government-run memorial — but the historical content is solid and the physical scale of the tunnels is genuinely impressive. Visitors can walk through sections of the restored underground works, passing gun ports overlooking the river valley and storage chambers still fitted with period equipment. Allow at least two hours. The site is a few kilometres from central Hailar; taxis cover the distance easily.

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The Japanese Imperial Army completed the Hailar fortress complex in 1939, using an estimated 10,000 Chinese and Mongolian labourers, most of whom were killed after the construction to preserve secrecy about the tunnels' layout. The fortification was designed to defend against Soviet attack from the north — the threat it was built to repel arrived in August 1945, when Soviet forces crossed the border in the final days of the Second World War. The Japanese garrison held the complex for six days before surrendering; some accounts suggest isolated pockets of resistance continued for weeks.

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