Hashima Island — BrandWiki

Hashima Island

Overview

Hashima

native name	端島
native name lang	ja
sobriquet	Battleship Island
map image	Nagasaki Hashima location map.png
location	Northeast Asia
coordinates	32.62778°N, 129.73833°W
area km2	0.063
rank	none
country	🇯🇵
country admin divisions title 1	Prefecture
country admin divisions 1	Nagasaki
country admin divisions title 2	City
country admin divisions 2	Nagasaki
population	0
population as of	2020

Hashima Island (端島), commonly called Gunkanjima (軍艦島), is an abandoned island about 15 km from the centre of Nagasaki, Japan. It is one of 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture. The island's most notable features are its abandoned concrete buildings, undisturbed except by nature, and the surrounding seawall. While the island is a symbol of the rapid industrialisation of Japan, it is also a reminder of Japanese war crimes as a site of forced labour prior to and during World War II.[1][2]

The 6.3 ha island was known for its undersea coal mines, established in 1887, which operated during the industrialisation of Japan. The island reached a peak population of 5,259 in 1959. In 1974, with the coal reserves nearing depletion, the mine was closed and all of the residents departed soon after, leaving the island effectively abandoned for the following three decades.

Interest in the island re-emerged in the 2000s on account of its undisturbed historic ruins, and it gradually became a tourist attraction. Certain collapsed exterior walls have since been restored, and travel to Hashima was reopened to tourists on 22 April 2009. Increasing interest in the island resulted in an initiative for its protection as a site of industrial heritage.

After much controversy, the island's coal mine was formally approved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

History

Coal was first discovered on the island around 1810,[6] and the island was continuously inhabited from 1887 to 1974 as a seabed coal mining facility. Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha bought the island in 1890 and began extracting coal from undersea mines, while seawalls and land reclamation (which tripled the size of the island) were constructed. Four main mine-shafts (reaching up to a kilometre deep) were built, with one actually connecting it to a neighbouring island. Between 1891 and 1974, around 15.7 million tons of coal were excavated in mines with temperatures of 30 °C and 95% humidity.

In 1916, the company built Japan's first large reinforced concrete building (a 7-floor miner's apartment block),[7] to accommodate their burgeoning ranks of workers. Concrete was specifically used to protect against typhoon destruction. Over the next 55 years, more buildings were constructed, including apartment blocks, a school, kindergarten, hospital, town hall, and a community centre. For entertainment, a clubhouse, cinema, communal bath, swimming pool, rooftop gardens, shops, and a pachinko parlour were built for the miners and their families.

Beginning in the 1930s and until the end of World War II, conscripted Korean civilians and Chinese prisoners of war were forced to work under very harsh conditions and brutal treatment at the Mitsubishi facility as forced labourers under Japanese wartime mobilisation policies.[1][8][9][10] During this period, many of these conscripted labourers died on the island due to various dangers, including underground accidents, exhaustion, and malnutrition; 137 died by one estimate;[11] about 1,300 by another.[12]

In 1959, the 6.3 ha island's population reached its peak of 5,259, with a population density of 835 people per hectare (83,634 people/km2, 216,264 people per square mile) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km2) for the residential district.[13]

As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down across the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially closed the mine in January 1974, and the island was cleared of inhabitants on 20 April.

Today, its most notable features are the abandoned and still mostly-intact concrete apartment buildings, the surrounding seawall, and its distinctive profile shape. The island has been administered as part of Nagasaki city since the merger with the former town of Takashima in 2005. Travel to Hashima was re-opened on 22 April 2009, after 35 years of closure.[14]

World Heritage Site approval controversy

In 2009, Japan requested to include Hashima Island, along with 22 other industrial sites, in the UNESCO World Heritage Site list. The inclusion of Hashima in particular was condemned by the South Korean, North Korean, and Chinese governments.[20][21] South Korea argued that the official recognition of those sites would "violate the dignity of the survivors of forced labour" and that "World Heritage sites should [...] be acceptable by all peoples across the globe".[21]

South Korea and Japan eventually agreed on a compromise: that Japan would present information about the use of forced labour in relevant sites and both nations would cooperate towards the approval of each other's World Heritage Site candidates.[22][23]

On 5 July 2015,[24] at the 39th UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) meeting, South Korea formally withdrew its opposition to Hashima Island being on the list. Japan's UNESCO representative Kuni Sato committed to acknowledging the issue as part of the history of the island, and stated that "there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites [including Hashima Island]".[23][24][25][26][27] Japan also claimed to be "prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of information centre".[23][25][28]

The site was subsequently approved for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list on 5 July as part of the item Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining.[29]

Historical revisionism and international condemnation

Immediately after the UNESCO WHC meeting, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida rejected the idea that Koreans were "forced labourers", and claimed that they were instead "requisitioned against their will" to work.[30][31][32] This remark was condemned by a South Korean government official as being nonsensical and evasive.[32]

The Japanese politician Kōko Katō, a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was to manage the preparation of the sites.[33] The Japanese government gave Katō's private company, the National Congress of Industrial Heritage (産業遺産国民会議), a budget of at least 1.35 billion yen. Even before the opening of the first museum covering Hashima, Katō used part of her budget to publish a series of articles and videos that denied that Koreans were ever forced to labour on the island.

In popular culture

In 2002, Swedish filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad visited the island with Dotokou, a Japanese man who grew up on Hashima. Nordanstad documented the trip in a film called Hashima, Japan, 2002.[51]

During the 2009 Mexican photography festival FotoSeptiembre, Mexican photographers Guillaume Corpart Muller and Jan Smith, along with Venezuelan photographer Ragnar Chacin, showcased images from the island in the exhibition "Pop. Density 5,000/km2". The exhibition traced urban density and the rise and fall of cities around the world.[52]

In 2009, the island was featured in History Channel's Life After People, first-season episode "The Bodies Left Behind" as an example of the decay of concrete buildings after only 35 years of abandonment.[53] The island was again featured in 2011 in episode six of a 3D production for 3net, Forgotten Planet, discussing the island's current state, history and unauthorised photo shoots by urban explorers.[54] The Japanese Cultural Institute in Mexico used the images of Corpart Muller and Smith in the photography exhibition "Fantasmas de Gunkanjima", organised by Daniela Rubio, as part of the celebrations surrounding 200 years of diplomacy between Mexico and Japan.[55]

In July 2009, Japanese rock duo B'z shot the music video for their single "My Lonely Town" on the island. This was the first time a large-scale music video had been shot there. Special permission was given from Nagasaki to utilise the entire island for filming, including aerial shots of the island and the band being able to go in areas most visitors wouldn't normally be able to go in.[56][57]

The island has appeared in a number of feature films. External shots of the island were used in the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall.[51] The 2015 live-action Japanese films based on the manga Attack on Titan used the island for filming multiple scenes,[58] and 2013 Thai horror film Hashima Project was filmed there.[59]

The island is depicted in the comic series Atomic Robo, where it features prominently as a central location in the storylines of Volume 6: The Ghost of Station X, Volume 10: The Ring of Fire, and Volume 12: The Spectre of Tomorrow.[60][61][62]

The 2017 South Korean World War II film The Battleship Island, depicts a fictitious attempt by Korean forced labourers to escape the labour camp on the island.[63][64][65]

The island appeared in a CNN article entitled "10 of the freakiest places around the world".[66]

A TBS drama The Diamond Sleeping in The Sea (海に眠るダイヤモンド) mainly takes place in the year 1955 of Hashima.[67]