Bat lovers in a flap over air-raid sheltersasahi.com, Sept 20, 2005
....When four junior high school students died from carbon monoxide poisoning while playing in an air-raid shelter in Kagoshima Prefecture this April, calls escalated to shut down the nation's shelters....hundreds of the World War II shelters have been condemned and boarded up....many of them, built into caves and other natural environments, have been serving more than their intended wartime purpose. They have attracted a vast and thriving community of komori-bats.
Closing the shelters means depriving the bats of their home and breeding sites. And this has bat lovers concerned..... the bat club set urged land ministry officials to press local governments to install bat gates when closing shelters. ... A bat gate can be installed instead of boarding up or sandbagging a shelter. It has a wide slot at the approximate height the animals fly, allowing them to come and go freely.....a bat gate costs 200,000 yen or less....more...
