AT A GLANCE
Why go?
High on the north-south ridge of Sokehs Mountain—known locally as Pohndollap, "on the big hill"—a single weathered naval gun still points out toward the reef. Cast in Britain in 1905 and hauled up the slope by Japanese engineers in the run-up to World War II, the Coastal Battery Gun is one of the most evocative relics on Pohnpei, set in a buried rock-and-steel bunker and reached by a short walk along the old Japanese artillery road that overlooks the state capital, Kolonia.↗
The gun was built to guard Palikir Pass, a principal channel through the barrier reef to the west, with a reach of about seven kilometres, yet Pohnpei was never invaded—Allied forces chose to bomb the island instead, and the battery probably saw little action. Today it survives in surprisingly good condition, surrounded by magazines, a camouflaged bunker and a trench system, making it a favourite stop for travellers who want history with their hike.
The gun and its hidden bunker
The centrepiece is a 15 cm naval gun manufactured by the British firm Armstrong-Whitworth in 1905, mounted inside a substantial bunker of rock and steel on the mountain's western slope. Roughly eight by six metres, the structure used steel I-beams to support a concrete ceiling mounded over with earth so it would be hard to pick out from the air—camouflage that has weathered the decades well. Two ammunition magazines with heavy steel doors sit behind the gun, and a short corridor links the rear of the bunker to a prominent trench that runs about sixty metres south before ending at a large bomb crater.