Hashima Island (Gunkanjima)

Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 for the coal seams beneath the surrounding seabed. They built Japan’s first large reinforced concrete apartment block here in 1916. Over the following decades, the 6.3-hectare rock was covered with buildings: apartments, a school, a hospital, a cinema, shops, a shrine, and a community bath. By the 1950s, over 5,000 people lived here. The population density exceeded 83,000 people per square kilometer, the highest ever recorded anywhere.

The Life

Residents lived in concrete blocks nine stories tall, connected by corridors and stairways. There was no green space. Fresh water was piped from the mainland. Typhoons struck regularly, and the seawall surrounding the island gave the rock its nickname: Gunkanjima, “Battleship Island,” because from a distance it resembled a warship. The mine shafts descended beneath the sea floor. Temperatures underground reached 45 degrees Celsius.

The Abandonment

Japan’s energy shifted from coal to petroleum in the 1960s. Mitsubishi closed the mine in January 1974. The last residents left on April 20, 1974. They took their personal belongings. They left everything else: furniture, televisions, schoolbooks, records, bottles. The concrete buildings remain standing, deteriorating in the salt air and typhoon winds. Vegetation has taken the courtyards.

Today

UNESCO inscribed Hashima as part of the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution” in 2015. Boat tours from Nagasaki allow visitors to land on a restricted portion of the island. The rest is structurally unsafe. South Korea has objected to the UNESCO listing, noting that Korean forced laborers worked the mines during World War II. The island’s history includes both industrial achievement and wartime exploitation.