Kofu, an ancient town with a long history, was the base of the famous Takeda clan during the Warring States period, and it has a superior natural environment, beautiful gorges and first-class hot springs, and the traditional economy is based on silkworm farming and raw silk, and since the Meiji Restoration, sake brewing, textiles, and a small amount of light industry have gradually developed, especially after the construction of the railway, many wealthy people from around Kyoto have come here every year to travel and soak in the hot springs.

Nevertheless, after entering the 20th century, Kofu was not patronized by any dignitaries, because in peacetime, no dignitaries were willing to commit themselves to such an inconspicuous place, and even when the German-Japanese War broke out and the Luftwaffe bombed Tokyo and coastal cities, not many people fled to this place, and those dignitaries seemed to prefer to hide in simple and damp bomb shelters rather than come to this poor country.

It wasn't until the fifth month of the German-Japanese war that all that changed.

For those who have lived in Kofu for generations, the change seems to have happened overnight, and everything was normal until dark, only to wake up in the morning to find that the streets of the town were filled with thousands of soldiers, with glittering bayonets, vicious gendarmes, house-to-house inspections and registrations, and then everyone, whether elderly or children, was told to go out every day only when they were receiving food and daily necessities. Soon, barbed wire and watchtowers became ubiquitous, one inexplicable exclusion zone after another made people feel like they were living in a big cage, life began to become oppressive, the atmosphere of war became more and more intense, fighter jets painted in yellow-green paint appeared over the city day and night, a large number of anti-aircraft guns were transported by railroad lines, and the small town was armed into a fortress with a lot of barrels......

It wasn't until a few months later that people vaguely heard that the emperor had left Tokyo and that the entire cabinet and military headquarters had moved to a safe place, some saying that they had gone to Kyoto, others that they had gone to a city in northern Kyushu, and the most shocking thing was that. The name of Kofu is rumored to be in the place where the emperor is coming, and when you think of the extremely tight security here and the high-end cars that sped through the streets from time to time, people have the most basic suspicion that the emperor himself may have actually arrived!

Excitement and pride were fleeting, and people couldn't help but feel frustrated that they didn't even know when the emperor would come and where he would stay, and that it was not a good thing for them to live in the same city as the emperor during these war years, especially when the country's air force was weak and the enemy had a strong strategic bomber force.

When the terrible air raid sirens sounded again, people rushed to the nearby bomb shelter with the already numb mood. The more worried you are, the more likely it is to happen.

As is often the case, in recent months, the Germans have suddenly taken an interest in a small place like Kofu, which has neither a military heavy industry nor a strategic location, and their first bombing showed the people of Kofu the horrors of the German war machine, with hundreds of bombers dropping bombs that razed the city almost instantly, even the quaint walls that have been handed down for hundreds of years, more than half of the city's citizens were killed in that bombing, and even the troops stationed here are said to have suffered heavy casualties. Although the air defense units and fighter units defending the area have achieved the record of shooting down enemy planes and damaging one plane, they are insignificant compared to the huge losses.

After that. Many Kofu people have been forced to leave their homeland where they were born and raised. But there were also those who stubbornly stayed, and with the help of the defenders, they built many anti-aircraft bunkers. Although these bunkers could not fully withstand the bombardment of the Germans, the number of people killed in the bombing was much lower. Two months ago, the first military radar developed by the Japanese military was put into use, and its appearance enabled the Japanese army to carry out air defense early warning more effectively - before that, the Japanese army's air defense alert system relied on human eye observation, listening to the sound of the listening device and the combination of aircraft patrols, but these methods were affected by many external factors, and the accuracy and timeliness of the early warning have been disappointing.

About 5 or 6 minutes after the air raid sirens sounded, a group of German bombers appeared in the western sky, and hundreds of camouflaged anti-aircraft guns in and around Kofu were all on standby, and the officers and men were watching closely in the direction of the sunset. Although they knew that their resistance would not stop the Germans from dropping bombs, although they knew that they would most likely die in this battle, most of them did not even know that the emperor himself was in Kofu, and no one chose to escape.

At this moment, a group of fighters in dark green paint, although pitifully few in number, although the firepower was simply not comparable to those of those German long-range bombers. The pilots rushed forward without hesitation.

The battle in the air soon began and ended quickly, not a single dark green fighter survived, and two of the behemoths that came from afar raised black smoke.

As the distance narrowed, the rumbling cannon finally sounded, and the cannonballs bloomed one after another in the high altitude like a salute, and the sky was soon covered with black salutes, but it was a pity that none of those huge flying monsters fell, they continued to fly forward in an orderly manner, opening the hatch of the abdomen at a certain height and distance, and then, a large number of children of death screamed and fell, they were so dense that it looked as if the gods had sprinkled a handful of black rice, and it was like the ink that God had spilled.

Amid the dense and violent explosions, the battle quickly entered **, but it did not take much time for more than two hundred bombers to drop all the bombs, and only fifteen minutes later, the German fleet turned around and returned.

As the last cannon shot disappeared into the wind, the world returned to peace, the ruins were still ruins, but puffs of black smoke were rising from them, and the surviving people burrowed out of their burrows like rats, clearing out the garbage and looking for anything of value left over from the bombing.

Another bombing was over, but the Germans still failed to hurt the last valuable target, because the man was not in the city of Kofu at all.

There is an abandoned iron mine about ten kilometers north from the city of Kofu, which is known to the old residents, and there is a railway track connection between the mine and the city, but since the quarry was abandoned in the 90s of the last century, the locomotive and carriages that originally ran on this railway have been transferred to other places, and the railway has been abandoned. Unbeknownst to people, however, that at the same time that a large number of troops were stationed in Kofu, the railway was also renovated. The former pit was secretly transformed into a reinforced concrete underground fortress, with specialized power generation, communication equipment and later radar detection equipment, as well as high-efficiency air filters, water purification filters, anti-poison facilities and multiple escape routes, with a total usable area of more than 3,000 square meters. The generator room, the telegraph and telephone room, the army and navy operations command room, the conference room, the movie screening room, the quarters for the officers and men of the Guards, the dining room, the lavatory room, and the royal area are all available, and it is an architectural marvel to know that the project took only three months from start to finish. But behind this miracle was the sweat, blood and lives of thousands of laborers and prisoners of war, and more than 23,000 Chinese, Korean, Indian, and Filipino laborers and German prisoners of war participated in the project. Only 16,000 people survived to the end of the project, and even these people were not spared by the Japanese army in the end. For the sake of secrecy, the Japanese carried out one of the largest massacres of the German-Japanese War, and a veritable mass grave was in a valley less than 1 km from the mine!

No sooner had the large-scale and ingenious project been completed than the Emperor and his wife left the panicked city of Tokyo with members of the Imperial Family, senior cabinet officials, and senior military generals to settle in the seemingly perfect fortress – Japanese munitions experts estimated that even if a thousand German heavy bombers bombed the area intensively, the core structure of the fortress deep underground would not be damaged.

For the Emperor and his wife who live here, the safety is far better than that of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, and the communication with the outside world is basically not affected, but in terms of the comfort of living. Not only is there limited exclusive space, but there is also a lack of sunlight and plants. In order to prevent the noble royal family from suffering from mental illnesses such as depression in the underground, under the arrangement of the Minister of the Interior and the Ministry of War, as long as there is no hostile situation. The Emperor and his wife and other members of the Imperial Family would take a special elevator to the top of the mine every morning and evening. Although the mine is rocky, there is no shortage of dense woods around it, but most of these woods are very ordinary pine trees, with the occasional cypress tree or two, and there is no comparison with the intricately carved old cypress trees in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

As usual, the German fleet on the radar screen finally disappeared to the west. However, due to the limited detection range of the A-type radar used by the Japanese army, they could not directly detect whether the German bomber group was hovering in the distance, but the visual inspection report would come from the line as soon as possible. So after the departure of the German fleet, the busyness in the radar room came to an end for the time being. Instead, there was an anxious and dreary wait.

"Your Majesty, the German bombing formation has left, there are about 240 of them, and all the bombs have been dropped in the city of Kofu! Our fighter units and air defense units shot down one enemy plane and damaged seven! ”

As soon as the report from the War Department came out, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Tokugoro Hashi, came to "report the good news" in a hurry.

"Oh, then I can go up there and take a walk!"

Hirohito was obviously not very interested in the war report, and he had vaguely heard the violent explosion just now, and as the spiritual leader of the country and the protector of the people, he felt frustrated at his own powerlessness. Over time, this frustration also became numb. He looked at the large grandfather clock in the corner, this moment happened to be the "time to let the wind out", since he came here, this morning and evening "ascent" was his only chance to breathe, and the rest of the time, this supreme man in Japan could only stay in this deep underground.

"Your Majesty......" Tokugoro Hashishi said with a worried face, "with the current state of affairs, it is really not appropriate for Your Majesty to go up there!" ”

"Huh?" Hirohito stared at his Minister of Internal Affairs in bewilderment, "Didn't the Germans' plane go?" Even if there is a next batch, won't we have enough time to come down again? ”

"Your Majesty is right, it's just that ......" Tokugoro Hashi bowed down in awe, "Your Majesty remembers the kind of flying bombs used by the Germans to attack Sasebo?" ”

"Remember, what's wrong?" Hirohito still didn't quite understand.

"Your Majesty, we don't know the performance of those flying bombs, how far and how fast they can fly, and if they can fly from Pusan to Sasebo, whether they can fly to this Kofu too! Your Majesty, judging by the situation in recent months, the Germans already know that you are in the Kofu area, but we don't know if they know about the situation of this royal fortress! Maybe they don't know, but it's also possible that they know and know that their conventional bombs can't threaten us, so ......"

"Alright, I see what you mean!" Hirohito waved his hand indifferently, "I don't believe that the Germans could fly so far and land on my head without a beat!" ”

"Your Majesty, this may sound incredible, but before Sasebo was attacked, didn't our experts also think that a long-range attack across the strait was impossible?" Tokugoro Hashishi continued to advise.

"The distance between Busan and here is more than 2,000 kilometers!" Hirohito said, "If the Germans had that kind of technology, it would not be surprising that we would have lost the war!" ”

"Your Majesty must not say that!" Tokugoro Hashishi fell to the ground in horror, "Although the navy has suffered a setback, the strength of the army is still there, the confidence of the people is still there, and the spirit of the empire is still there!" Your Majesty, you must not be so depressed, the Germans are on an expedition of thousands of miles, and it is taboo to fight for a long time! As far as His Majesty knows, the anti-war banner in Germany was held high, and the government of Wilhelm III was already flying like a boat on the sea! ”

Hirohito didn't answer, and after being silent for a while, he looked at Tokugoro Hashi, "Just go up for a quarter of an hour, how about it?" ”

"Your Majesty thinks twice......" Qiao De still crouched in place and refused to get up.

"10 minutes, how?" Hirohito took another step back, as the dignified emperor of the Japanese Empire, bargaining with his own Minister of the Interior on such a small issue, outsiders will inevitably feel embarrassed when they know about it.

"Your Majesty think twice......" Qiao De still didn't get up.

Write minutes, just 5 minutes! I want to see the sunset, just a glance! ”

This time, Tokugoro Hashishi finally relented: "Since Your Majesty is so resolute, Your Majesty will no longer stop you, I only hope that Your Majesty can abide by this five-minute covenant, and this will be followed every day in the future, until the military department can determine that the German flying bombs are not enough to threaten Your Majesty!" ”

Hirohito was silent, he did not know that it would be at least ten years before the German rockets flew from Pusan, but it was not only the Germans who wanted to kill him, but also the anti-imperialist and anti-war radicals in Japan who wanted to assassinate him to end the battlefield and end the decadent imperial system that had lasted for thousands of years. Correspondingly, there is a group of people in Germany who are also prepared to pursue their aspirations for democracy and republicanism in extreme ways.