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Hashima Island is a small, formerly-inhabited island in Japan, lying about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the center of the city of Nagasaki. The island's most notable features are its abandoned concrete buildings, undisturbed except by nature and tourists, and the surrounding sea wall. While the island is a symbol of the rapid industrialization of Japan, it is also a reminder of Japanese war crimes as a site of forced labour prior to and during the Second World War.[1] It was abandoned in 1974 when Japan began favouring petroleum over coal causing Mitsubishi to closed the mine and relocated the entire population to the mainland. After over 3 decades of abandonment, access to the island was restored in 2009, allowing tourists to visit the island and take in the sights. These sights include the island's distinctive shape, which is said to resemble a battleship, and this is what gives the island its name.

Coverage[]

Hashima Island is featured in The Bodies Left Behind where it has seen the future of the Life After People where homes, offices, and factories are crumbling as nature takes over. Brian Burke-Gaffney, along with Akihisa Murata and Doutoku Sakamoto, visit the island to show its history and the progress of nature.

The Golden Age[]

Hashima Island was once a thriving coal mining town, and it is home to thousands of people. Because of the unsafe conditions, the island is off limits to visitors. In the 1890s, Japan's Mitsubishi company began mining coal from the seafloor and the island begins to peak when it was home to 5000 workers and their families, the highest population density recorded on Earth at the time.

The Abandonment[]

All is doing fine in the island until in 1974 when Japan began favouring petroleum instead of coal, forcing Mitsubishi to closed down the mine and relocated the entire population to the mainland, thus nature begins to conquer the island. Brian Burke-Gaffney stated that the island is left to be exposed to the elements from the wind carrying seawater to the buildings where degradation is startling and remarkable.

Exploration[]

Brian Burke-Gaffney explained that Hashima Island is an example in life after people, he stated that the row of stores with wooden shutters that once housed have all the lumber to collapse to the ground, concrete walling fallen, and metal netting is strewn to the ground, and explain that the effects are just 35 years of wind and rain. The rooms once echoed with children playing, with inside are the corroded toys, the school playground have been overgrown and rusting scrap metal, and every year in the typhoon season, it delivers rain and wind up to 100mph with huge ocean waves smash into buildings turning Hashima into a laboratory for the reinforced concrete. Akihisa Murata stated that one building with an iron frame and steel reinforced parts pillar is seen damaged in a front, stating that the surface is damaged by saltwater, wind, and rain, while the back isn't.

It was reported that concrete core samples from scientific studies reveal that the buildings most exposed to the ocean had salt content 15 times greater than the others, and the concrete buildings gave the island a nickname "Battleship Island." Brian Burke-Gaffney explains the nickname since it look like a battleship from afar and was actually torpedoed during World War 2.

Doutoku Sakamoto used to lived on the island as a young boy and his former home is on the ninth floor of a building that once housed 300 families in tiny apartments. He show his room where it was used until 1974, he has 5 family members living in the house, he also show his private room and a balcony. The wooden facades of balconies were quickly destroyed while many passageways and stairs are falling apart. Brian Burke-Gaffney explains the Jigokudan and was named because of being steep. He then explains that the buildings in Hashima are up to 9 stories in height and people had to negotiate stairs on a daily basis without elevator or escalator within the island. He then stated that Hashima was just a bare rock without vegetation and turned into a human community but in reality it return to being lifeless. The episode ended the visit stating that natural invasion of Hashima Island shows that mankind has bids for immortality and face for very long odds.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • The island is open just one day (or perhaps even on the day, depending on timezone) after the episode aired in 2009 on April 21 (according to US time), tourist and visitor access was restored on April 22 then.

References[]

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