Hashima Island

Hashima Island

Everyone knows the history of Hashima Island. Hashima Island mean’s “Border Island”. It is situated 15 kilometers from Nagasaki’s jurisdictions itself. Hashima was colonized from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The main feature of this island is that it covered with deserted concrete buildings and the island is surrounded by sea. Since 2005 it has been considered as the part of “Nagasaki”, before that it was under the control of former town of “Takashima”.

If you happened to see the Hashima island from a distance you might mistake it with the Japanese version of Alcatraz, but in reality this island was the most flourishing community with the highest population on earth just only 40 years ago.

While pretentious elite privileges to work the Takashima mine, the “Nabeshima Clan” allowed the “Fukahori Family” to spout the layer of coal lines from corner to corner and to other nearby islands. After quite a few unsuccessful efforts, the “Fukahori Family” finally mounted a streak mine on “Hashima” in 1887, populating it for the first time. After only three years “Fukahori Family” sold the island to Mitsubishi Corporation in 100,000 yen. Mitsubishi Corporation is now one of the most famous company of the world had prolonged quickly after its commencement as a shipping enterprise in 1873, and had purchased the Takashima Coal Mine in 1881.

Mitsubishi Corporation built a shatterproof concrete apartment building block on the island to ease the need of accommodation space and to avoid typhoon damage. This was Japan’s first concrete building of any noteworthy size. After that it was no stopping back one after another the island was swarming with more than 30 concrete buildings the most important thing I would like to mention is that even though the Ward War II, was on their heads not even a single concrete building was built in Japan accept “Hashima Island” due to the fact that this was a part of national efforts to meet the large requirement of coal during wartime, as a result, “Hashima’s” yearly coal production reached to an astonishing 410,000 tons in 1941, but to achive such goal every nation and every man has to sacrifice some thing in this scenario while Japanese youth was fighting the battle on the boarders of China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, the Japanese government hired huge numbers of Koreans and Chinese by force to fill in the empty seats in the factories and mines, and due to the hard conditions and hunger many of these men lost their life’s. In August 1945 was the day when Allied forces, bombed the “Hashima Island” about 1,300 manual workers had died on the island that day.

The latest from “Hashima Island” is that from 22nd of April 2009, the island is open once again for public and tourists, transport will be provided by “Yamasa Kaiun” from Nagasaki.

Hashima Island

Hashima Island