Hashima Island: Japan's Ghost Island

In today’s journey we will travel to a truly haunting destination, off the coasts of Southern Japan. A sliver of land, covered in the vestiges of an industrial past, emerging from the sea like a spectral warship carved in crumbling concrete.

Despite its minuscule size, this island is home to a complicated history, steeped in the prosperity of late 19th Century Japan, and the hardship brought about by its Imperial expansion. Once forgotten by the world, then rediscovered by James Bond, it has often been called ‘Japan’s Ghost Island’. And in fact, even the plainest of photos of this island, taken in full daylight, can send shivers down one’s back, as you imagine its ruins as being haunted by the disembodied screams of restless phantoms.

But if there are any ghosts on Hashima, they belong to an uncomfortable past. Memories which cannot find peace, torn in an endless dispute waged by regional powers.

This is the story of Hashima Island.

Alien Archaeology

Hashima is one of 505 uninhabited islands which are part of the Nagasaki Prefecture, in the Kyushu Region, at the southern end of Japan. Hashima itself lies in the East China Sea, some 15 km to the south west of Nagasaki.

The island once claimed the title of being one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, but today it is completely uninhabited, except for a population of cats, rumoured to roam its ruins. Hashima is also tiny, stretching only 160 metres from east to west, and 480 metres from north to south. These measures correspond to a surface area of just 0.063 square km, which corresponds to almost 12 football fields.

Despite its small size, Hashima’s appearance is striking. In contrast with the nearby islands, covered in greenery, this location is covered in stark tones of grey and black. The surface is entirely covered in clustered concrete buildings, as if they are fighting for space within the enclosure of a man-made sea wall.

As befits an abandoned location, most of the buildings are decaying or crumbling, most of the flat surfaces are smothered in rubble. Hashima conjures to mind how our cities might appear to archaeologists from an alien species, landing on our planet in a distant future. If these hypothetical scholars were to explore the ruins, they could find mementoes of everyday life, strewn about the debris.

Canadian author Brian Burke-Gaffney once provided a vivid description of his walk amongst rubble:

‘I roamed amid the brooding apartment blocks and explored the lanes and corridors, peering into rooms, turning over pieces of paper, and conjuring up images of human activity. Almost all the windows were broken, and glass crunched underfoot everywhere I walked … The island was strewn with old-fashioned electrical appliances … It was like a folk museum of the sixties. In the barber shop, tarnished scissors were still laying on the counter … and the walls were plastered with archaic movie posters.’

Our alien archaeologists might be surprised to discover that the inhabited centre extends for hundreds of metres under the surface, in a network of deep shafts and tunnels. And probably our future friends would be left scratching their giant grey heads, wondering what was the purpose of such deep excavations.

Those underground structures were the very reason why Hashima was once inhabited by thousands of hard-working humans, busy at extracting what was once the Earth’s main source of energy: coal.

Shafted

The history of Hashima is, indeed, strictly linked to coal mining. Everything that happened on its surface, even the darkest corners of its past, are strictly linked to the wealth underneath it.

To better understand the story of Hashima, however, we have to move to a nearby, larger island, Takashima. For centuries, prior to the 1700s, the inhabitants of Takashima fueled their furnaces and household fires by using coal, collected from ‘beds’ conveniently exposed to the surface.

When Japan’s transportation networks improved in the 18th and 19th centuries, the good people of Takashima took to selling their surplus coal to salt makers on the mainland’s coast. Saltmakers extracted salt from sea water, and they needed a reliable fuel source to bring that sweet H2O to boiling point. When local pine forests were depleted, and firewood became scarce, coal made for a great substitute!

At the time, Takashima belonged to the feudal domain of the Fukahori family, who immediately smelled the sweet, burnt scent of business. The Fukahoris asserted their management rights over the coal beds, employed the islanders as a labour force, and increased exploitation of the local resources.

By the late 1850s, Japan had opened its markets to the rest of the world, and Nagasaki became one of the most important ports of the country, a convenient stopover for American and European merchantmen sailing to and from China. Around the same area, steam ships started replacing sailing vessels, making coal an even more profitable commodity.

Enter Nabeshima Naomasa, head of the Nabeshima clan, of which the Fukahoris were a branch. Nabeshima must have heard a symphony of cash registers in his head, as he took over operations and asked the islanders to expand the collection of coal.

Very quickly, the exposed coal beds neared depletion, which prompted Nabeshima to turn to an expert to modernise his mining concern, Scottish merchant Thomas B. Glover. Glover hired a team of British engineers, and with their mining equipment they drilled the first shaft on Takashima. In April 1869, Glover struck gold — or we should say ‘coal’, at a depth of 45 metres.

The discovery kicked off Japan’s first modern coal mine, producing large quantities of combustible rock. Customers were initially dubious of its quality, though, so Glover reassured them by comparing it to British coal:

‘For slow, or expansive steaming, Takashima coal is equal in every respect to the average run of Welsh and much better than North Country or any other coal I have burned on this station … It produces less ashes, clinker and soot.’

Quite the marketing guru.

The success of the Takashima mine inspired the Nabeshima Clan to survey nearby islands for more coal, delegating the task to the Fukahori family.

In 1887, the Fukahoris hit the jackpot on Hashima, installing the first of its mine shafts. In 1890, the family received an offer from the Mitsubishi Corporation: 100,000 Yen for the island! Established as a shipping firm in 1870, the group had quickly expanded into other areas, sensing a big opportunity in coal mining.

The Fukahoris accepted the offer and ceded Hashima to Mitsubishi. Now, we don’t know if 100,000 Yen was a good price, or if the Fukahoris had been shafted. What did get shafted, literally, was the island.

Japan had entered its Meiji era, a period of major political and economic expansion. The country was becoming an industrial power, with a military to match. In 1894 Japan went to war against China, and in 1904 against Russia. Factories, trains and warships needed tons of coal, and government contractors such as Mitsubishi had to meet those demands.

Thus, in 1895, the corporation excavated a second shaft, almost 200 metres deep, to access a rich coal bed under the bottom of the sea. Two more would follow, one in 1898, the other in 1925.

As the Mitsubishi engineers bore deep underground, and as miners extracted more and more material, they also brought to the surface tons of ‘slag’ and other debris which they put to good use. If Hashima is tiny today, back then it was even tinier.

By using the byproduct of their mining operations, Mitsubishi were able to expand the land area over six successive land reclamation projects, from 1897 to 1931. Surface area was almost doubled, allowing builders to erect industrial facilities and housing for the workers. Then, to protect the infrastructures from waves and typhoons, engineers completed a sea wall, all around Hashima’s perimeters.

Years later, a journalist would notice that Hashima’s stark, elongated shape and smoking chimneys gave it the appearance of a battleship. Hence the island’s unofficial name, Gunkanjima — Battleship Island.

By 1916, Battleship Island was producing 150,000 tons of coal every year, which required the constant presence of 3,000 Mitsubishi clerical employees, miners, and their families. Hashima had essentially become a ‘company town’.

Until then, most of the resident workforce had been living in wooden accommodation, which wasn’t great, especially when typhoons struck the island. To remediate the problem, Mitsubishi built a six-story reinforced concrete apartment block, the largest in Japan at the time.

Living inside the concrete block was OK … if the alternative was being blown off by a typhoon, that is! Living conditions were extremely cramped, as each apartment included only one small bedroom and one small vestibule. Kitchens, toilets and bath houses were communal! Natural light was also a luxury, as each unit only had one window, half of them facing a dingy inner courtyard. Luckily, in 1917 Mitsubishi had a submarine cable laid down, to ensure the supply of electricity.

And as more and more miners were brought on to the island, the corporation had to expand the housing capabilities. In 1918, another building sprung up, an E-shaped concrete block, nine-stories high, which offered larger flats than the 1916 condo. And then, one after the other, more gloomy yet functional blocks rose on the island, wall to wall, corner to corner, until more than thirty buildings completely covered Hashima.

By the time it was fully developed, Battleship Island was a sort of extremely concentrated version of Japanese society. Its inhabitants had access to schools, a playground, a hospital, a police station, 25 retail shops, a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine. Those who worked hard — all of them, actually — could also play hard, as Hashima would boast a martial arts dojo, a pachinko parlour, a movie theatre, bars, restaurants, and even a brothel. All of these premises were interconnected by a maze of walkways, corridors, passages and staircases, which islanders always traversed on foot, of course.

The Hashima society also reflected a rigid hierarchical order, in which unmarried miners and subcontractors were relegated to the one-room flats, while married workers could enjoy two-bedroom flats. Office employees could enjoy even better accommodation, with their own kitchens and toilets.

While the coal mine’s manager had his own house, located on Hashima’s highest point!

Prison Island

From that sweet pad atop the hill, mine managers had to deal with soaring demand in the 1930s. Imperial Japan was on a full-on expansionist binge, first occupying Manchuria in 1931, then invading China in 1937, and trading blows with the Soviets and the Mongolians in 1939. Then, on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The nation was now embroiled in WWII, fighting the Americans, the British and the Dutch in South East Asia. The military needed fuel, and so Hashima ramped up its productivity.

One of its shafts was excavated to a depth of 636 metres, while miners worked long hours in increasingly harsh conditions. In the 1930s, the mines suffered two fires and one gas explosion, which claimed 34 victims. In 1941, the Hashima mines reached their production peak, at 410,000 tons of coal.

To keep up with the demand, the Mitsubishi corporation, with backing from the government, relied more and more on forced labour, namely deported workers from Korea, part of the Japanese Empire.

The employment of Korean forced labour was officially divided by Japanese authorities into three phases:

• ‘Recruitment’, from September 1939 to February 1942.
• ‘Official mediation’, from March 1942 to September 1944.
• And ‘Conscription’ until the end of the war in the Pacific.

During the second phase, the recruitment of labourers was delegated to the Korean Labour Association, who had to fill some pretty demanding quotas. To convince reluctant Koreans to leave their home and travel to Hashima — or other forced labour facilities — they were helped by the Japanese police.

The Korean Labour Association recruiters were often supported by supervisors sent from Hashima, such as Kosako Mayasuki. As reported by Nikolai Johnsen, writing for The Asia-Pacific Journal:

‘With the help of local colonial authorities, he rounded up 40 to 50 Koreans from each village where he went, and only the few who managed to jump off the train on its way to the Korean port were spared from slavery on Hashima.’

Kosako admitted to ordinarily discriminating against Chinese or Korean workers, who were forced to perform

‘Labour much tougher than in the military’

The former supervisor even revealed that at the end of the war

‘We let supervisors of Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean workers secretly escape from the island first because of the fear of revenge from Korean workers.’

One of those who did NOT jump off Kosako’s train was Ch’oe Changsŏp, forcibly recruited in 1943, aged just 14. Changsop ended up in a dark and humid dormitory, shared with other Korean prisoners. He had to work daily shifts up to 16 hours, in hot, narrow tunnels, sustained by a meagre diet which bordered on starvation.

Changsop witnessed how the Korean miners would be whipped with rubber straps until their skin peeled off, and suffered serious injuries after a tunnel caved in. It was impossible for Changsop and his companions to leave the island, not even temporarily. Only the Korean workforce who had arrived on Hashima before 1939 was allowed to do so. The young man endured these conditions until the end of the war, when he was sent to Nagasaki for clean up operations after the Americans had dropped the atomic bomb.

All the while, Changsop had been promised the payment of a salary. But when he was finally allowed to return home, he received a single payment of 50 yen.

In the final ‘conscription’ phase, the collection of forced labourers was carried out directly by the Kempeitai, the much feared Japanese military police. Korean citizens had the legal right to refuse conscription, but it was difficult to say ‘no’. True to their reputation, the Kempeitai officers employed physical violence as a ‘recruitment’ tactic.

Kang Tosi belonged to this last wave of Korean unwilling miners, and reported being assigned to the most dangerous coal face at Hashima, plagued by gas leakages and flooding.

Another survivor of Hashima, Suh Jung-woo, recounted his harrowing experience in a 1983 interview:

‘We Koreans were lodged in buildings on the edge of the island. Seven or eight of us were put together in a tiny room, giving each person no more than a few feet of space … the interior was filthy and falling apart… We were given uniforms like rice bags to wear and forced to begin work the morning after arrival. We were constantly watched and ordered around by Japanese guards, some of whom were wearing swords.’

Jung-woo reported how four or five workers died every month, lost to accidents, exhaustion, malnutrition and disease:

‘Our meals consisted simply of 80% bean dregs and 20% brown rice boiled together with whole sardines into a formless mush. Almost every day I suffered from diarrhoea, and my strength gradually drained away … I don’t know how many times I thought of jumping into the sea and drowning myself’

According to Jung-woo, many other fellow Koreans acted on that thought, forty or fifty of whom drowned of their own volition, or while trying to swim to the coast.

‘It still wrings my heart to think about those other Koreans. Today people call Hashima “Battleship Island,” but for us it was the “Prison Island” of no escape.’

By the end of the war, the cruel coal mines of Hashima had exacted a heavy toll on their Korean labourers. According to Brian Burke-Gaffney:

‘By the time the atomic bomb rattled the windows on Hashima apartment blocks … about 120 labourers had died on the island … in underground accidents [and] of illnesses related to exhaustion and malnutrition. Still others had chosen a quicker, less gruesome death by jumping over the sea wall and trying in vain to swim to the mainland.‘

A Dense Place

So, during the war, Hashima Island was essentially one of many forced labour camps managed by the Japanese armed forces, the government and/or its contractors. Most Japanese sources dedicated to this location tend to ignore this chapter of its past. And, we shall learn later, there are voices who actively and strongly contest the accounts of former Korean labourers.

For the moment, let’s continue with our timeline of events.

After the Japanese signed the instrument of surrender in September 1945, Battleship Island continued to operate, albeit its coal was now destined to more peaceful and industrious purposes. But nothing propels business more than armed conflict. And the onset of the Korean War, in 1950, gave a general impetus to the entire Japanese industry.

In 1956 and 1957 the inhabitants of the island had to face a string of disasters: first, a typhoon destroyed its port facilities; then, a raging fire devastated the schools, the hospital and a tenement building. But business continued to grow, and by 1959 Hashima reached its peak population at 5,259, tightly packed over the 40% of the surface area which did not slope towards the sea. This accounted for a population density of 1,391 inhabitants per hectare, equivalent to 13,910 people per square km! This may have been the highest population density ever recorded!

Mitsubishi continued to own the island. In the words of Burke-Gaffney, they managed it as

‘A kind of benevolent dictatorship that guaranteed job security and doled out free housing, electricity and water but demanded that residents take turns in the cleaning and maintenance of public facilities.’

By all accounts, there was a strong sense of community in Hashima. Workers and their families shared happy times while enjoying the recreational facilities, and suffered together when storms cut off all supplies from the mainland. Needless to say, the island was far from self-sufficient, as produce doesn’t grow easily on slabs of concrete. This issue was partially resolved with the planting campaign of 1963.

By using imported soil from the mainland, the islanders created gardens on their rooftops, planting vegetables, as well as flowers, which added a touch of colour to the endless grey of their surroundings. Around the same time, standards of living greatly improved, as Mitsubishi ensured that every flat was equipped with TV sets, refrigerators and electric rice cookers.

But just as the Hashima coal mines were reaching their zenith, they embarked on a quick decline. Japanese industry and economy were soaring, and coal was not enough to provide enough energy. The government began investing more and more on petroleum as an energy source, and coal mines started shutting down around the country.

Gradually, Mitsubishi removed much of their work force from Hashima, assigning them to other sectors of their conglomerate.

All was to come to an end. On January 15, 1974, Mitsubishi held a solemn ceremony in the island’s gymnasium, where they announced the impending closure of the mine. A speedy and orderly exodus ensued, with the last resident leaving for Nagasaki on April 2.

Then, silence fell upon the completely deserted island, as the force of the elements gradually turned the efforts of planners, engineers, managers and ordinary families into a heap of crumbling, overgrown slabs of concrete.

Hashima, or Battleship Island, stood abandoned, an almost forgotten shrine to both the ingenuity and the cruelty of humankind. Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, very few visitors walked through its maze of corridors, almost nobody climbed its many staircases.

One of those few was the already quoted Burke-Gaffney, who spotted a short poem, spray painted on one of the ruined walls:

‘How many decades could have passed Since Hashima was left to rot; Left to spoil, rot, disintegrate? Life will never return to this island.‘

Melancholy and Kaijus

Author Burke-Gaffney took his visit as an inspiration to reflect on unbridled industrialisation and the depletion of natural resources:

‘The dead island of Hashima delivers a lively warning about the importance of foresight. It offers a view of the end result of “development”, the fate of a community severed from Mother Earth and engaged in a way of life disconnected from its food supply. In short, Hashima is what the world will be like when we finish urbanising and exploiting it: a ghost planet spinning through space’

What the Canadian writer could not foresee, however, is that Battleship Island would not remain ‘dead’ forever. Sure, permanent life would not return on its surface, but it would be at the centre of a lively trade. And in addition to being a cautionary symbol of a decaying planet, it would embody a decades old dispute between two regional powers.

But let’s proceed in order.

The island and its history were rediscovered by the Japanese in the late 1980s. It was seldom visited, but its haunting landscape of modernist ruins would strike a chord with the public. Japanese audiences, after all, were attuned to a popular culture which swung between the two extremes of mournful melancholy, and the spectacle of giant lizards turning skyscrapers into rubble.

The Nagasaki Prefecture eventually opened the island to tourism in 2009, attracting the attention of international audiences. A turning point was the production of the James Bond film ‘Skyfall’, released in 2012. If you have seen the movie, you may remember the scene in which Bond confronts antagonist Silva in his headquarters, located on an abandoned island … Director Sam Mendes fell in love with Hashima, and wanted to film on location, but due to safety concerns, he had to replicate it, slab by slab, in England, at Pinewood Studios.

Regardless, the success of ‘Skyfall’ catapulted Hashima into public consciousness, and tourism soared. If you want to visit the island today, you may join a guided tour in the port of Nagasaki, from which Battleship Island can be reached in 40 minutes. The local tourism board advises that individual, unaccompanied visits are not allowed, as many buildings are structurally unstable. You should also avoid showing up at the port in winter and during the typhoon season, as tours might be cancelled depending on the weather.

Hashima’s rediscovery prompted UNESCO to cast a keen eye on the Hashima coal mines, as part of their evaluation of 23 significant locations linked to the Meiji Industrial Revolution. In July 2015, UNESCO finally registered Hashima and the other 22 locations as a

‘World Heritage Site under the grouping ‘Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining.’

To be precise, the entirety of Battleship Island is NOT a World Heritage Site, as the vast majority of its buildings were erected after the Meiji era. That designation only belongs to the actual coal mine.

Nonetheless, the UNESCO accolade further propelled the tourism trade to Hashima, a boon for the local economy. But it also fuelled another unintended consequence: controversy.

The Battle over the Past

When UNESCO had included the Hashima mine amongst the 23 Meiji sites, it had brokered an agreement between South Korea and Japan. According to the agreement, Tokyo had pledged to properly acknowledge the history of Korean forced labour on the island. Accounts of this mobilisation should have been included in all exhibits and material related to the Hashima site.

But Japan, however democratic and constitutionally pacifist, always had some resistance in confronting its Imperialist past. And this case was no different. As reported by Yuji Hosaka, writing for The Diplomat:

‘Less than two years later, however, the Japanese government broke its promise to present the historical fact of Japan’s mobilisation of Koreans for forced labour’

According to the already quoted Nikolai Johnsen, Japanese authorities did acknowledge the presence of Korean labourers, but they did so only by mentioning

‘That Japan had a labour conscription policy from 1944 to 1945 … Narratives of Korean Hashima labourers do not differentiate between those who came by choice before the war, and those who were forcefully mobilised and forced to work in extreme conditions under Japanese government labels of “recruitment” and “conscription” between 1939–1945’

In other words: the narrative attached to the Hashima site is that, sure, Koreans were conscripted into labour. But this was done according to the same regulations applied to Japanese nationals, who could be mandated by the government to conduct vital work for the war effort. In this version of events, Koreans — whose country had been annexed to Japan at the end of the 19th Century — were no different from Japanese citizens.

Anyone could be conscripted for the war effort, but they were all fairly compensated. Moreover, Koreans did not suffer neither discrimination nor harsh treatment at the hand of their Japanese employers.

According to Johnsen, this narrative is heavily influenced by the Industrial Heritage Information Centre, or IHIC, which is in turn run by the National Congress of Industrial Heritage, a government-funded foundation.

The IHIC opened to the public on June 15, 2020, showcasing an exhibition which, according to Hosaka and The Diplomat, features content that breaches the 2015 agreement with South Korea.

The content in question is the testimony of a former Hashima resident, a second-generation Korean Japanese, who claimed that

‘no discrimination occurred against Koreans. He said his father worked at the coal mine on the island and denied any bullying or finger pointing toward Koreans. He said his father was a supervisor. Koreans who had a Japanese family registry were granted the status of supervisor.’

In February 2021, more former residents of Battleship Island came forward to refute allegations of slave labour. Their efforts focused on publishing a booklet to debunk the use of certain photos, cited as proof that Koreans were abused in the mines.

For example, one of said images was exhibited at the

‘National Memorial Museum of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Occupation’

in Busan, South Korea.

Well, according to the 2021 booklet, that photo was actually taken in 1955 at a coal mine in Fukuoka Prefecture, and had nothing to do with Battleship Island. Yet another contested snap, showing an alleged Korean labourer covered in wounds, had actually been taken in 1918.

The former residents’ booklet may have focused only on a handful of contested documents, but it shows how the battle over the past of Hashima raged at all levels of Japanese and Korean society.

In summer of 2021, Tokyo was due to host the Olympic Games, which brought much international scrutiny on the issue of Hashima. UNESCO stepped in again, and in July of that year adopted a resolution

‘Calling on the Japanese government to provide sufficient and more accurate information about forced labour victims at the Industrial Heritage Information Center’

The following month, UNESCO doubled down, expressing

‘Strong regret’

Over Japan’s management of the Meiji Heritage Sites, citing the case of Hashima, and the country’s failure to maintain its earlier agreement to memorialise victims of wartime labour.

The IHIC is not the only foundation staunchly opposing the Korean side. You see, the controversy around Hashima had already been simmering since 2017, when South Korean director Ryoo Seung-wan released his war drama Gunhamdo or Battleship Island.

The movie is also referred to as Escape from Gunkanjima, and centres around a group of Korean labourers, who stage an evasion from Hashima and its hellish living conditions.

The film attracted the attention of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Facts, a Japanese self-described volunteer organisation whose mission statement reads

‘For a long period of time there were frequent conflicts between Japan and her neighbours. During the conflicts, Chinese war propaganda took precedence over the objective exposition of facts in English-language literature … Painfully aware of the need to remedy this situation, we have resolved to make historical facts as they pertain to modern Japanese relations with neighbouring countries, especially China, available to English speakers’

The ‘Society’ thus released an article, titled

‘The truth about The escape from Gunkanjima’

Which holds positions similar to those of IHIC. According to the article, Korean workers on Hashima had a regular contract, and thus no escape attempts were ever made. The piece quotes at length from the Chairman of the Society of Hashima Islanders, according to whom Korean labourers were well-respected in the mines, and their children frequented the local schools.

At the end of the war, the Mitsubishi management went to great lengths to charter a ship, so as to safely repatriate the 900 Koreans still present on the island.

‘Both Japanese and Koreans alike waved farewell, yearning for each other. When they got aboard the ship and as it was leaving Hashima, all Japanese gathered at the pier and waved to the Koreans, who waved back to us until they were gone, out of sight.’

So, no ill-feelings, it appears. The Chairman even reported that, shortly afterwards, many Korean miners returned to Hashima, as they enjoyed better pay and living conditions.

The last piece of news we could find about this debate comes from Korean newspaper Hankyoreh, and was published in September 2023. Reporter Kim So-youn writes that, on September 14, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee had

‘Removed much of the criticism it had heaped on Japan two years ago, in its decision on “follow-up measures”, to be taken by the Japanese government regarding Hashima Island’

The UNESCO decision implied that they were satisfied with Tokyo’s efforts to commemorate forced labourers at the site itself. But So-youn visited the Industrial Heritage Information Centre, and realised that its exhibit still downplayed Battleship Island’s dark past.

‘There was very little information about the horrific history of forced labour, harsh working conditions, and extreme discrimination that Korean victims of forced labour experienced on Hashima Island’

Conclusion

It is not above our pay grade to determine what is the truth about Hashima. The general consensus amongst historians is that Imperial Japan did perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity on par with its nefarious Axis allies, crimes included exploitation of prisoners of war and civilians as forced labourers.

Individual testimonies about conditions at Hashima appear to disagree on the topic, as you might expect in such a politically charged debate. Although we should point out that we were able to quote at least one account from a Japanese supervisor, who admitted to recruiting labour by force, and to actively discriminating against non-Japanese miners.

Will the ghosts of Hashima’s past ever be put to rest? Probably not. But Hashima Island is a tangible piece of a complex history — and history, by its very nature, cannot but feed on ghosts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Hashima Island known as?

Hashima Island is also known as ‘Japan’s Ghost Island’ and ‘Battleship Island’ (Gunkanjima).

What was the primary industry on Hashima Island?

The primary industry on Hashima Island was coal mining.

How did Mitsubishi expand the land area of Hashima Island?

Mitsubishi expanded the land area of Hashima Island through six successive land reclamation projects using the byproduct of their mining operations.

What was the peak population of Hashima Island?

The peak population of Hashima Island was 5,259 residents in 1959.

What happened to the Korean laborers on Hashima Island during World War II?

During World War II, Korean laborers on Hashima Island were subjected to forced labor, harsh working conditions, and extreme discrimination. Many were recruited by force and endured long hours, malnutrition, and dangerous working conditions.

When did Mitsubishi close the coal mine on Hashima Island?

Mitsubishi closed the coal mine on Hashima Island on January 15, 1974.

What is the current status of Hashima Island?

Hashima Island is currently a tourist attraction. Visitors can join guided tours from the port of Nagasaki, but individual, unaccompanied visits are not allowed due to structural instability.

What is the controversy surrounding Hashima Island’s history?

The controversy surrounds the acknowledgment of forced Korean labor during World War II. Japan and South Korea have differing narratives about the treatment and conditions of Korean laborers on the island.

What is the significance of Hashima Island’s coal mine?

Hashima Island’s coal mine is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site ‘Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining.‘

What was the living situation like for residents on Hashima Island?

Residents on Hashima Island lived in cramped, concrete apartment blocks with communal facilities. Despite the harsh conditions, there was a strong sense of community among the residents.

Sources

• Original Places video: Hashima Island: Japan’s Ghost Island
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• Hero image source by Saga1111 / openverse, by-sa.