# What Happened on This Island Still Haunts Japan

An episode of [Scary Interesting Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1705969819), 23 Sep 2026, 23 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75315003/what_happened_on_this_island_still_haunts_japan.mp3

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## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is Hishima Island. Today, it's just a tiny patch
[0:04] Speaker 1: of concrete off the coast of Japan, and it's one
[0:07] Speaker 1: of the strangest places on Earth. In 1959, it was
[0:10] Speaker 1: one of the most densely popular places on the planet.
[0:13] Speaker 1: It had schools, apartments, and markets, all tightly packed behind
[0:17] Speaker 1: these concrete walls. Then beneath it ran a network of
[0:20] Speaker 1: tunnels extending deep under the surrounding ocean, where men worked
[0:23] Speaker 1: in heat and darkness with the seabed above their heads.
[0:26] Speaker 1: As dangerous as that sounds though, the mine wasn't the
[0:29] Speaker 1: darkest part of life there. So in this video, we're
[0:32] Speaker 1: going to go over the dark history behind the island,
[0:34] Speaker 1: the strange lives of the people who lived on it
[0:36] Speaker 1: and below it, and how one of the most densely
[0:38] Speaker 1: popular places on earth became completely abandoned. Sejongwu had already
[0:53] Speaker 1: been carried a long way from home by the time
[0:54] Speaker 1: the island appeared in front of him. Taken from his
[0:57] Speaker 1: village in Korea while he was still just a teenager,
[0:59] Speaker 1: he was placed in a truck with other young men
[1:01] Speaker 1: and moved from one holding point to another. The journey
[1:04] Speaker 1: continued by train and ship, eventually carrying him and hundreds
[1:07] Speaker 1: of others into Japan. Until then, he'd held onto one
[1:10] Speaker 1: small hope. He had relatives living somewhere in the country,
[1:13] Speaker 1: and he believed that perhaps he could escape and find them.
[1:16] Speaker 1: It was a thought that gave him something to hold
[1:17] Speaker 1: onto in a hopeless situation, but that was before he
[1:20] Speaker 1: saw Hashima Island. From the water on the way toward it,
[1:23] Speaker 1: the island didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before.
[1:26] Speaker 1: It rose from the East China Sea behind a wall
[1:28] Speaker 1: of concrete, and its apartment blocks and industrial buildings were
[1:31] Speaker 1: packed so tightly together that they appeared to form the
[1:33] Speaker 1: outline of a warship. There were no beaches, forests, open fields,
[1:37] Speaker 1: or greenery of any kind to speak of, just rock, seawall, machinery,
[1:41] Speaker 1: and buildings seemingly stacked atop one another. Around it was
[1:45] Speaker 1: open water in every direction, and he understood right away
[1:48] Speaker 1: that escape from this place would be nearly impossible. Hashima
[1:52] Speaker 1: Island sits about 9 miles from Nagasaki in Japan and
[1:54] Speaker 1: covers only about 16 acres or 6.5 hectares. A former
[1:58] Speaker 1: resident once claimed that it was so small that a
[2:00] Speaker 1: person could walk across it in less time than it
[2:02] Speaker 1: took to smoke a cigarette. Yet within that tiny space,
[2:05] Speaker 1: Mitsubishi had built an entire industrial town above a vast
[2:08] Speaker 1: network of coal tunnels extending deep beneath the seabed. The
[2:12] Speaker 1: island then became known as Gunkonjima or Battleship Island because
[2:15] Speaker 1: of its shape on the horizon from a distance. and
[2:18] Speaker 1: it would eventually stand out as one of the most
[2:19] Speaker 1: dramatic symbols of Japan's transformation into a modern industrial power.
[2:24] Speaker 1: Thousands of miners and their families lived there, surrounded by schools, shops, apartments,
[2:28] Speaker 1: and recreation facilities. For some, it became a crowded but
[2:31] Speaker 1: prosperous hometown. For those like Su, however, the same walls
[2:35] Speaker 1: that protected the island from heavy seas and stormy weather
[2:37] Speaker 1: made it feel like a prison. Backing up a little
[2:40] Speaker 1: bit though, long before all of that, Hashima Island had
[2:43] Speaker 1: been little more than a lonely barren outcrop. and its
[2:45] Speaker 1: transformation began with the discovery of something hidden beneath the rock.
[2:49] Speaker 1: Coal had been gathered for generations on nearby Takashima Island,
[2:52] Speaker 1: where exposed deposits could be picked right from the ground
[2:54] Speaker 1: and used as fuel. Local tradition credited a man named
[2:57] Speaker 1: Gohita with first realizing the strange black rock could burn
[3:00] Speaker 1: after it was accidentally placed in a fire. Whether or
[3:03] Speaker 1: not the story happened exactly that way, the coal gradually
[3:05] Speaker 1: became an important part of the region's economy from that point.
[3:08] Speaker 1: Demand increased as salt producers along Japan's Seto Island Sea
[3:12] Speaker 1: searched for new fuel. The making of salt required boiling
[3:15] Speaker 1: large quantities of seawater, and the pine forests traditionally burned
[3:18] Speaker 1: for the process were being steadily depleted. Coal offered an alternative,
[3:22] Speaker 1: and improvements in transportation made it easier to ship the
[3:24] Speaker 1: fuel beyond the islands where it was found. Coal was
[3:27] Speaker 1: then discovered along Hashima Island's rocky shoreline around 1810, and
[3:31] Speaker 1: its collection remained small and informal in their early goings.
[3:34] Speaker 1: Fishermen gathered deposits exposed near the surface, treating the work
[3:37] Speaker 1: as a side job rather than a permanent industry. Several
[3:40] Speaker 1: operators would go on to attempt to establish more serious
[3:42] Speaker 1: mining operations in the years after, but Hashima Island proved
[3:45] Speaker 1: to be a difficult place to operate. Violent water, strong winds, typhoons,
[3:49] Speaker 1: and the challenge of digging beneath the seabed made the
[3:51] Speaker 1: work expensive and dangerous. As a result of all this,
[3:55] Speaker 1: it wouldn't be until 1887 that permanent development began when
[3:58] Speaker 1: a shaft was opened to a depth of 118 feet
[4:01] Speaker 1: or 36 meters. This was a modest beginning for what
[4:04] Speaker 1: it would eventually become, but it marked the moment Hashima
[4:06] Speaker 1: Island turned into a crucial driver for the economy. Three
[4:10] Speaker 1: years later, a company called Mitsubishi arrived, and by that time,
[4:13] Speaker 1: it had already begun building an industrial empire around Nagasaki.
[4:17] Speaker 1: The company had acquired the nearby Takashima mine nine years
[4:20] Speaker 1: earlier and had experience using modern machinery to reach coal
[4:22] Speaker 1: deposits beneath the sea. Hashima Island, despite its smaller size
[4:26] Speaker 1: and harsher surroundings, offered the same promise on an even
[4:29] Speaker 1: larger scale. Mitsubishi paid just 100,000 yen for the island
[4:33] Speaker 1: and its mining operations in 1890 before placing it under
[4:35] Speaker 1: the same management as Takashima, and new shafts quickly followed.
[4:39] Speaker 1: A second was opened in 1895, and another came the
[4:42] Speaker 1: following year. As the tunnels spread farther beneath the seabed,
[4:45] Speaker 1: the island's output began to rise until it eventually surpassed
[4:48] Speaker 1: that of the older Takashima mine nearby. What had once
[4:51] Speaker 1: been just a rocky outcrop vulnerable to every storm that
[4:54] Speaker 1: came to the region became the center of a growing
[4:56] Speaker 1: undersea mining operation, and Mitsubishi's control of the island extended
[5:00] Speaker 1: far beyond the tunnels below. The company owned the land,
[5:03] Speaker 1: managed the housing, provided utilities, and organized the boats that
[5:06] Speaker 1: connected residents with Nagasaki. Work, shelter, transportation, and daily necessities
[5:11] Speaker 1: all depended upon the same employer. And this created a
[5:15] Speaker 1: strange power dynamic. For the people who started living on
[5:17] Speaker 1: the island, losing a job could mean losing nearly everything
[5:20] Speaker 1: else as well. During the mine's early years, some workers
[5:23] Speaker 1: lived under a contract-run system known as the Naya, or
[5:26] Speaker 1: shed system. Laborers were housed in dormitories overseen by foremen,
[5:30] Speaker 1: who exercised authority over both their work and their lives
[5:33] Speaker 1: outside the mine. This arrangement placed workers under heavy restrictions
[5:37] Speaker 1: and was later described as semi-compulsory. Despite these conditions, though,
[5:41] Speaker 1: as production increased, Mitsubishi ran into a basic problem. The
[5:45] Speaker 1: mine required machinery, storage areas, workers, and housing, but the
[5:48] Speaker 1: island had almost no room for any of them. It
[5:50] Speaker 1: was just too small. So to expand the operation, the
[5:53] Speaker 1: company would have to do more than dig beneath it.
[5:55] Speaker 1: Mitsubishi would have to essentially rebuild the island itself. So
[5:59] Speaker 1: early in the 20th century, Mitsubishi began reconfiguring and redesigning
[6:02] Speaker 1: the island piece by piece. The natural island was too small,
[6:05] Speaker 1: so engineers pushed out to the sea. Mine waste, rock,
[6:09] Speaker 1: and other scraps were used to create new ground around
[6:10] Speaker 1: the original outcrop. Heavy sea walls came next, built to
[6:14] Speaker 1: hold back the waves and protect the settlement from the
[6:16] Speaker 1: typhoons that regularly hit the East China Sea. And over time,
[6:19] Speaker 1: Hashima Island grew to several times its original size. Its
[6:23] Speaker 1: shoreline became less natural with each expansion until the island
[6:26] Speaker 1: resembled an industrial platform surrounded by concrete. Nearly every section
[6:30] Speaker 1: served the mine too. Shafts carried workers beneath the seabed,
[6:34] Speaker 1: and hoists raised coal to the surface. Conveyors then moved
[6:36] Speaker 1: it toward the storage areas, where it could be sorted
[6:38] Speaker 1: and loaded onto waiting ships. Rock and lower-quality waste were
[6:42] Speaker 1: carried toward the western side of the island and tossed
[6:44] Speaker 1: into the sea, and housing, machinery, processing facilities, and shipping
[6:47] Speaker 1: operations were all pressed together inside the same narrow boundary.
[6:51] Speaker 1: As production rose, the workforce grew with it, but again,
[6:53] Speaker 1: they couldn't spread homes across the land in a way
[6:55] Speaker 1: a normal town might, so they built upwards. In 1916,
[6:59] Speaker 1: the company completed building number 30, one of Japan's earliest
[7:02] Speaker 1: large reinforced concrete apartment blocks. Concrete offered better protection against fire, salt, wind,
[7:07] Speaker 1: and violent storms, and it also fit more workers into
[7:10] Speaker 1: a much smaller footprint. And the apartments themselves were private,
[7:13] Speaker 1: but only barely. A typical unit consisted of one room
[7:16] Speaker 1: measuring about 106 square feet or 9.9 square meters, and
[7:20] Speaker 1: it featured a small entrance area, one window, and a door.
[7:23] Speaker 1: Residents then shared kitchens, toilets, and bathing facilities. A larger
[7:27] Speaker 1: apartment complex then followed in 1918. Built against the island's
[7:31] Speaker 1: uneven central slope, it rose nine stories on the ocean-facing side,
[7:34] Speaker 1: but only three stories on the uphill side. At the time,
[7:37] Speaker 1: it was actually among the tallest buildings in Japan. And
[7:40] Speaker 1: even more concrete structures continued to appear as time went on.
[7:44] Speaker 1: Even during periods when construction materials were limited elsewhere in
[7:46] Speaker 1: the country, Hashima Island kept growing because coal had become
[7:49] Speaker 1: too important to Japan's industry to slow down the operations.
[7:53] Speaker 1: Soon enough, apartment blocks, schools, medical facilities, shops, and industrial
[7:57] Speaker 1: buildings covered nearly every available surface on the island, and
[8:00] Speaker 1: they all existed in one way or another to keep
[8:02] Speaker 1: the coal moving. The island had become a machine of sorts,
[8:05] Speaker 1: and everyone who lived there occupied some place inside it.
[8:08] Speaker 1: For Japanese miners and their families, the island became much
[8:11] Speaker 1: more than a workplace. It was an entire town compressed
[8:13] Speaker 1: into a few acres of concrete, and as the population grew,
[8:17] Speaker 1: Mitsubishi added nearly everything residents needed for daily life. There
[8:21] Speaker 1: were schools, a nursery, a hospital, markets, public baths, a cinema,
[8:25] Speaker 1: a gym, a swimming pool, a temple, and even a
[8:27] Speaker 1: pachinko parlor. The schoolyard doubled as one of the island's
[8:31] Speaker 1: only large gathering places, while rooftops became playgrounds, gardens, and
[8:34] Speaker 1: places to escape the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings.
[8:38] Speaker 1: Post-war photographs show a community that could appear like anywhere
[8:41] Speaker 1: else on Earth. Children played between apartment blocks and families
[8:45] Speaker 1: attended festivals, shoppers moved through narrow market lanes, and TVs
[8:48] Speaker 1: glowed from inside tiny apartments. Despite the island's isolation and
[8:51] Speaker 1: harsh environment, many former residents later remembered Hashima Island as
[8:55] Speaker 1: a lively and close-knit hometown. Even so, as you might imagine,
[8:59] Speaker 1: Mitsubishi offered certain advantages to persuade miners to accept the
[9:02] Speaker 1: difficult work and restricted lifestyle. Wages were comparatively high, electricity
[9:07] Speaker 1: was extremely cheap, and modern appliances became more common earlier
[9:10] Speaker 1: than they did in many other Japanese households. By the 1960s, refrigerators,
[9:14] Speaker 1: electric rice cookers, and TVs could be found throughout the settlement.
[9:17] Speaker 1: but the comfort of those items came with dependence. Again,
[9:20] Speaker 1: Mitsubishi controlled literally everything. A miner's employment determined where his
[9:25] Speaker 1: family lived and what services they could access, and losing
[9:27] Speaker 1: a position could therefore mean losing far more than a paycheck. Food, clothing, medicine,
[9:32] Speaker 1: and household supplies also arrived by boat from the mainland.
[9:35] Speaker 1: When typhoons or rough seas prevented boats from landing, shortages
[9:38] Speaker 1: could develop quickly. And even with regular transportation to Nagasaki,
[9:42] Speaker 1: residents remained physically enclosed by the seawalls and surrounded by
[9:45] Speaker 1: open water. For Japanese families, Hashima Island offered pretty much
[9:49] Speaker 1: everything they could possibly need, but it also demanded that
[9:52] Speaker 1: they build their entire lives around the mine. And no
[9:54] Speaker 1: matter how active or prosperous the service appeared, the work
[9:57] Speaker 1: supporting it was punishing. When one man, Tomoji Kabada, arrived
[10:01] Speaker 1: as a young Japanese miner in the early 1960s, he
[10:04] Speaker 1: nearly lost consciousness during just his first descent underground. He
[10:08] Speaker 1: emerged with coal dust coating his face so completely that
[10:11] Speaker 1: it sometimes fell into his food in chunks while he ate.
[10:14] Speaker 1: After a shift, he said that many miners wanted little
[10:16] Speaker 1: more than alcohol and sleep, By the time the island
[10:19] Speaker 1: reached its busiest years, it had become one of the
[10:21] Speaker 1: most crowded places on Earth. Almost no ground remained unused.
[10:25] Speaker 1: Apartment blocks stood so close together that narrow alleyways became
[10:28] Speaker 1: the island's roads. Residents moved through a maze of staircases,
[10:32] Speaker 1: elevated walkways, and dim corridors squeezed in between concrete walls.
[10:36] Speaker 1: In some areas on rainy days, people could cross much
[10:38] Speaker 1: of the settlement without opening an umbrella. Homes also stood
[10:41] Speaker 1: beside coal processing equipment, and there was no boundary between
[10:44] Speaker 1: the industrial operation and the daily lives of the island's citizens.
[10:47] Speaker 1: Residents lived with the noise of nearby machinery, the constant
[10:50] Speaker 1: smell of extraction, and coal dust settling over everything. Then,
[10:53] Speaker 1: in a strange contrast, there was ample space inside the mine.
[10:57] Speaker 1: In fact, the busy and bustling city visible above the
[10:59] Speaker 1: seawall was the smallest part. Beneath the island, tunnels extended
[11:03] Speaker 1: out under the surrounding ocean. Some reached more than half
[11:06] Speaker 1: a mile below sea level, following coal seams far beyond
[11:09] Speaker 1: the limits of the land overhead. And the deeper the
[11:11] Speaker 1: operation went, the less Tsushima Island resembled an average mine.
[11:15] Speaker 1: Because the world above was so strange, it's easy to
[11:16] Speaker 1: forget that workers were laboring beneath the seabed with millions
[11:19] Speaker 1: of tons of water hanging above them. Miners would enter
[11:23] Speaker 1: through vertical shafts and descend by elevator into a network
[11:25] Speaker 1: of galleries and passageways. Temperatures inside the mine commonly reached
[11:29] Speaker 1: between 86-97 degrees Fahrenheit or 30-36 Celsius. Humidity was also brutal,
[11:35] Speaker 1: hovering around 90% most of the time, and climbing even
[11:37] Speaker 1: higher when conditions were just right. The air was thick
[11:40] Speaker 1: with heat, moisture, and coal dust to the point where
[11:43] Speaker 1: everything became soaked and breathing was difficult. Every simple movement
[11:46] Speaker 1: seemed to demand more effort than a wood above ground,
[11:49] Speaker 1: and the arrangement of the coal seams made extraction especially punishing.
[11:52] Speaker 1: Some descended at angles of 40 to 60 degrees, creating
[11:55] Speaker 1: steep and awkward working areas where machinery could not always
[11:58] Speaker 1: be used effectively. In the narrowest coal faces, miners had
[12:01] Speaker 1: to crouch or bend while digging, and much of this
[12:03] Speaker 1: work still depended on human labor. Coal removed from the
[12:06] Speaker 1: seams was loaded and moved through the tunnel system before
[12:08] Speaker 1: being raised to the surface by hoist. and this entire
[12:11] Speaker 1: operation ran without stopping. The island's miners worked in three
[12:14] Speaker 1: eight-hour shifts, keeping the mine active 24 hours a day.
[12:18] Speaker 1: As one group climbed to the surface, another descended to
[12:20] Speaker 1: replace them. Industrial lights remained visible across the island throughout
[12:23] Speaker 1: the night, while beneath them, men continued cutting coal in darkness.
[12:27] Speaker 1: The miners even sometimes referred to themselves as moles, and
[12:30] Speaker 1: while this might have indicated a comfort level with being
[12:32] Speaker 1: underground for so long, mining beneath the sea was still
[12:34] Speaker 1: extremely dangerous. Methane could gather in poorly ventilated passages and
[12:39] Speaker 1: ignite without warning, Coal dust suspended in the air could
[12:42] Speaker 1: turn a small spark into a fire explosion. Rock ceilings
[12:45] Speaker 1: could give way and equipment could fail catastrophically. Fires could
[12:48] Speaker 1: also spread through underground galleries with incredible speed, and water
[12:51] Speaker 1: could enter even faster. Flooding carried a particular sense of
[12:55] Speaker 1: terror as every miner understood that somewhere above the rock
[12:58] Speaker 1: was the immense weight of the ocean. As you might
[13:01] Speaker 1: expect with all these threats, accidents began early in the
[13:03] Speaker 1: mine's history. In 1897, a fire in the first shaft
[13:07] Speaker 1: led to firefighting efforts that flooded the workings and forced
[13:10] Speaker 1: Mitsubishi to abandon it. A gas explosion in 1939 caused
[13:14] Speaker 1: 34 casualties, although surviving accounts don't clearly separate the number
[13:17] Speaker 1: killed from those injured. Another fire broke out near the
[13:20] Speaker 1: entrance to the second shaft in 1942, and sections of
[13:24] Speaker 1: the mine flooded with seawater in 1945. But even when
[13:27] Speaker 1: no major disaster occurred, the work itself damaged miners slowly.
[13:31] Speaker 1: Hours spent crouching in steep, confined spaces strained the bodies.
[13:35] Speaker 1: Coal dust would coat the skin and enter the lungs. Meanwhile,
[13:38] Speaker 1: above ground, typhoons presented a completely different threat. Waves battered
[13:42] Speaker 1: the seawalls and tore apart piers. Shoreline facilities were often
[13:45] Speaker 1: damaged in these storms too. One storm in 1956 destroyed
[13:49] Speaker 1: a landing pier, a southern wharf, and the community's swimming pool.
[13:53] Speaker 1: Another typhoon three years later badly damaged the surrounding seawalls
[13:56] Speaker 1: and docking areas. During the worst of the weather, waves
[13:59] Speaker 1: could cross reclaimed sections of the island despite the concrete
[14:02] Speaker 1: defenses built to hold them back. So although Hashima Island
[14:04] Speaker 1: had been specifically engineered to resist and defend against the sea,
[14:07] Speaker 1: it was never quite too far beyond its reach. All
[14:10] Speaker 1: of these dangers together, both on the surface and below,
[14:12] Speaker 1: plus the strange lives of the people living there, created
[14:14] Speaker 1: a place unlike almost anywhere else on the planet. And incredibly,
[14:18] Speaker 1: that's not even the worst of it. As Japan's efforts
[14:21] Speaker 1: expanded during World War II, the demand for coal grew
[14:24] Speaker 1: while the number of Japanese men available to mine it
[14:26] Speaker 1: began to shrink. Many had been drafted into the military,
[14:29] Speaker 1: leaving companies like Mitsubishi with fewer workers at the same
[14:32] Speaker 1: time the country needed more fuel than ever. The government
[14:34] Speaker 1: responded to this shortage by drawing labor from territories under
[14:37] Speaker 1: Japanese control at the time. Koreans in particular were first
[14:41] Speaker 1: recruited through systems that appeared voluntary on paper but became
[14:44] Speaker 1: increasingly coercive. As the war continued, mobilization of the workforce
[14:48] Speaker 1: shifted into conscription and requisition. Men and teenage boys were
[14:52] Speaker 1: removed from their communities and sent to mines and factories
[14:54] Speaker 1: across Japan. Chinese laborers, meanwhile, arrived through a separate system
[14:58] Speaker 1: that included civilians and prisoners taken from occupied areas. Seo Jong-woo,
[15:03] Speaker 1: who was introduced at the start, was one of them.
[15:05] Speaker 1: Just a teenager at the time, he was taken captive
[15:07] Speaker 1: from his village. He joined many boys and young men
[15:09] Speaker 1: between the ages of 14 and 20 as forced laborers.
[15:13] Speaker 1: And again, he had aspirations of escaping whatever place he
[15:15] Speaker 1: was forced to work. But all of that hope evaporated
[15:18] Speaker 1: the moment he saw Hashima Island from the approaching boat.
[15:21] Speaker 1: The closer it came to the island, the clearer it
[15:22] Speaker 1: became there was no easy exit. Concrete enclosed the island
[15:26] Speaker 1: in an open sea stretched between it and the mainland.
[15:29] Speaker 1: Boats were also controlled by Mitsubishi, and swimming through the
[15:31] Speaker 1: currents would have been extraordinarily dangerous. And so the same
[15:34] Speaker 1: geography that protected the mine and the surrounding community made
[15:37] Speaker 1: it easier to hold forced labor inside. On the island itself,
[15:40] Speaker 1: Korean workers were housed separately from many Japanese families. Su
[15:44] Speaker 1: would go on to be one of as many as
[15:46] Speaker 1: eight men crowded into one of the island's many tiny
[15:48] Speaker 1: one-room apartments. Each person had only a narrow strip of
[15:51] Speaker 1: floor space to call home, and the interior was dirty, damaged,
[15:54] Speaker 1: and poorly maintained. Soon after arriving, he was stripped of
[15:57] Speaker 1: his clothing and given crude work clothing that reminded him
[16:00] Speaker 1: of material used for rice sacks. Then the following morning,
[16:03] Speaker 1: he was sent to begin work in the mine. There
[16:05] Speaker 1: was no time to rest, recover from the journey, or
[16:07] Speaker 1: even become familiar with the work he was being asked
[16:09] Speaker 1: to do. Men brought to the island under caution were
[16:12] Speaker 1: expected to enter production right away. Korean and Chinese forced
[16:15] Speaker 1: laborers were also kept under constant supervision. Japanese guards, some
[16:19] Speaker 1: of whom were armed with swords, directed where the laborers
[16:21] Speaker 1: went and what they did. The workers were controlled around
[16:24] Speaker 1: the clock, both above ground and below it. Forced laborers
[16:28] Speaker 1: entered the same dangerous environments as Japanese employees, but without
[16:31] Speaker 1: the same freedoms and protections. They faced the everyday hazards
[16:34] Speaker 1: of mining, along with hunger, exhaustion, discrimination, restricted movement, and
[16:38] Speaker 1: the constant threat of violence. The generous housing, wages, and
[16:42] Speaker 1: amenities available to Japanese families didn't extend equally to those
[16:45] Speaker 1: brought to the island against their will. The exact number
[16:49] Speaker 1: of Korean and Chinese workers on Hashima Island is largely uncertain.
[16:52] Speaker 1: A wartime diary estimated that about 500 Koreans worked there,
[16:55] Speaker 1: but no complete roster ever survived. And the Chinese records
[16:58] Speaker 1: are even more troubling. A Japanese foreign ministry report compiled
[17:02] Speaker 1: after the war listed only 17 Chinese workers at Hashima Island,
[17:05] Speaker 1: and 15 of them were recorded as dead. Compared with
[17:08] Speaker 1: fuller records kept for other sites, the figures on Hashima
[17:11] Speaker 1: Island appear incomplete, and the death toll is disputed as well.
[17:14] Speaker 1: One estimate places the number of forced labor deaths at
[17:17] Speaker 1: around 137, while another frequently repeated claim raises the figure
[17:21] Speaker 1: to approximately 1,300, but it's unclear whether the total applies
[17:24] Speaker 1: to Hoshima Island alone or combines deaths from a wider
[17:27] Speaker 1: network of mines and labor sites. What survives most clearly
[17:31] Speaker 1: is the testimony of those who suffered through it. So remembered,
[17:34] Speaker 1: four or five workers dying in accidents during the average
[17:36] Speaker 1: month inside the mine, and according to his account, when
[17:39] Speaker 1: the deaths occurred, bodies were unceremoniously taken to nearby Nakunoshima
[17:43] Speaker 1: and cremated there. When Japan surrendered in August of 1945,
[17:47] Speaker 1: the empire and the labor system supporting it began to collapse,
[17:50] Speaker 1: so Korean and Chinese workers were finally released. But even
[17:53] Speaker 1: despite this, production never stopped. By the end of the 1950s,
[17:56] Speaker 1: Hashima Island had reached its fullest and most crowded form.
[18:00] Speaker 1: In 1959, 5,259 people lived there, putting its population density
[18:02] Speaker 1: at roughly 216,000 people per square mile. This is 83,000
[18:03] Speaker 1: people per square kilometer. Within the residential section, where buildings
[18:12] Speaker 1: were basically right on top of each other, that figure
[18:14] Speaker 1: was even higher. Taken all together, this meant the island
[18:17] Speaker 1: became known as the most densely populated place on Earth
[18:20] Speaker 1: at the time. Even today, the highest I can find
[18:22] Speaker 1: is about 45,000 people per square kilometer for Giza and Manila,
[18:26] Speaker 1: so quite literally almost double their density. Thankfully, post-war improvements
[18:30] Speaker 1: made life easier for many Japanese workers, as unions gained
[18:33] Speaker 1: influence and wages rose. Residents were also given more leisure
[18:36] Speaker 1: time than earlier generations of miners. and as the boom
[18:39] Speaker 1: in its population later began to subside, some smaller apartments
[18:42] Speaker 1: were combined into larger units. From the outside, Hoshima Island
[18:45] Speaker 1: appeared to be a remarkable success. Mitsubishi had turned a
[18:48] Speaker 1: nearly barren rock into a productive industrial town that offered schools,
[18:52] Speaker 1: medical care, entertainment, and modern conveniences in a place with
[18:55] Speaker 1: no natural freshwater and almost no soil. The prosperity, however,
[18:59] Speaker 1: remained hopelessly inseparable from the mine. Hoshima Island had reached
[19:02] Speaker 1: its peak, and while it enjoyed that success for some time,
[19:05] Speaker 1: there was an inherent weakness in what had created so
[19:07] Speaker 1: much wealth on the island. Everything depended on the coal,
[19:10] Speaker 1: and soon enough, Japan was starting to need less of it.
[19:13] Speaker 1: During the 1960s, Hashima Island's good fortune started to decline.
[19:16] Speaker 1: Japan's economy was still growing, but the fuel powering that
[19:19] Speaker 1: growth was changing. Imported petroleum was becoming cheaper and more
[19:22] Speaker 1: practical than domestic coal, so across the country, mines that
[19:25] Speaker 1: once seemed indispensable began reducing their production or closing altogether.
[19:29] Speaker 1: Hashima Island couldn't escape the same fate as all the others.
[19:32] Speaker 1: The mine had always been expensive to operate, and with
[19:34] Speaker 1: its tunnels extending far beneath the seabed, the active coal
[19:37] Speaker 1: faces moved increasingly further away from the shafts. Workers had
[19:40] Speaker 1: to travel great distances underground before reaching the places where
[19:43] Speaker 1: coal was being cut. Flooding still remained a constant threat,
[19:46] Speaker 1: while the steep angle of some seams made full mechanization difficult.
[19:50] Speaker 1: And the deeper and more remote the operation became, the
[19:52] Speaker 1: more it cost to keep each ton of coal moving
[19:54] Speaker 1: toward the surface. As a result, some miners were transferred
[19:57] Speaker 1: or retrained for other positions within the company, but little
[19:59] Speaker 1: by little, people started leaving the island. Apartments that had
[20:03] Speaker 1: once held large families began to empty. Schools served fewer children,
[20:06] Speaker 1: and shops and public facilities kept operating, but the overwhelming
[20:08] Speaker 1: crowding that had defined Hoshima Island's peak began to ease up. Finally,
[20:12] Speaker 1: on January 15th, 1974, Mitsubishi announced that the mine would
[20:16] Speaker 1: be closing, driving its residents into near-immediate unemployment. After nearly
[20:21] Speaker 1: nine decades of continuous settlement on Hoshima Island, the place
[20:23] Speaker 1: people had called home for so long had only a
[20:25] Speaker 1: few months left. And once the closure was announced, the
[20:28] Speaker 1: end came quickly. Around 2,000 people were still living on
[20:31] Speaker 1: Hashima Island at the beginning of 1974, but even that
[20:34] Speaker 1: number wouldn't last. Families packed up what they could carry,
[20:37] Speaker 1: and furniture, appliances, books, school supplies, and household objects were
[20:40] Speaker 1: sorted and abandoned. Boats began carrying residents away in groups,
[20:44] Speaker 1: returning them to Nagasaki, or taking them toward new jobs
[20:46] Speaker 1: and homes elsewhere. Building by building, the island emptied, and
[20:50] Speaker 1: on April 20th, the last resident departed. In only little
[20:53] Speaker 1: more than three months, Hashima Island's population fell from thousands
[20:56] Speaker 1: to zero. The speed of this evacuation made the transformation
[21:00] Speaker 1: that occurred there especially eerie as a functioning industrial city
[21:03] Speaker 1: stopped almost all at once. Mitsubishi retained ownership of the
[21:06] Speaker 1: island and restricted access. Former residents couldn't freely return to
[21:10] Speaker 1: their apartments or walk through places they had grown up. Instead,
[21:13] Speaker 1: the island was sealed off and left for the weather
[21:15] Speaker 1: to consume. Typhoons struck the seawalls and buildings, and rain
[21:19] Speaker 1: entered through broken windows. Saltwater worked its way into the concrete,
[21:22] Speaker 1: causing it to separate and crack. For decades, Hashima Island
[21:26] Speaker 1: had been one of the most crowded places anywhere on Earth,
[21:28] Speaker 1: and soon, there was no one left to witness it
[21:30] Speaker 1: falling apart. For years afterward, the island remained close to
[21:33] Speaker 1: the public, but its isolation and collapsing buildings attracted people
[21:37] Speaker 1: drawn to abandoned places. Photographers, filmmakers, historians, and unauthorized urban
[21:42] Speaker 1: explorers made their way to Hashima Island to document its demise.
[21:45] Speaker 1: In 2002, the island's ownership was transferred from Mitsubishi to
[21:49] Speaker 1: Takashima Town. And after Takashima became part of Nagasaki, the
[21:53] Speaker 1: city assumed responsibility for the ruins. Public tours then began
[21:57] Speaker 1: in 2009, but access remained severely restricted. Visitors were limited
[22:01] Speaker 1: to a protected walkway near the southern edge as most
[22:03] Speaker 1: of the apartment blocks, schools, stairways, and former residential districts
[22:07] Speaker 1: remained too dangerous to enter. More than 95% of the
[22:10] Speaker 1: island was normally off-limits, and rough weather often prevented tour
[22:13] Speaker 1: boats from landing at all. Preserving Hashima Island posed an
[22:16] Speaker 1: almost impossible problem too. Stabilizing every building would cost a
[22:20] Speaker 1: massive amount of money, and rebuilding too much could erase
[22:22] Speaker 1: the very sense of abandonment that made the island so powerful.
[22:26] Speaker 1: As a result of all of this, today, Hashima Island
[22:28] Speaker 1: has come to represent different things depending on who you ask.
[22:31] Speaker 1: To engineers and industrial historians, it's evidence of how rapidly
[22:34] Speaker 1: Japan transformed itself into a modern power. To former Japanese residents,
[22:39] Speaker 1: Hashima Island was home. For men like Su who were
[22:41] Speaker 1: there against their will, the island's memory sits in stark
[22:44] Speaker 1: contrast to those who were there voluntarily. Modern visitors approach
[22:48] Speaker 1: Hashima Island by tour boat and photograph its battleship silhouette
[22:50] Speaker 1: before walking along a protected path and returning to Nagasaki
[22:53] Speaker 1: a few hours later. So, on the other hand, approached
[22:56] Speaker 1: it as a captive and quickly came to realize how
[22:58] Speaker 1: impossible it would be to escape. All of this history
[23:01] Speaker 1: became part of the controversy surrounding Hashima Island's addition to
[23:04] Speaker 1: the UNESCO World Heritage Site List in 2015. Japan promoted
[23:09] Speaker 1: the island as a landmark of industrial development, while South
[23:11] Speaker 1: Korea and others argued that any honest account also had
[23:14] Speaker 1: to acknowledge the Korean and Chinese laborers brought there under caution.
[23:18] Speaker 1: The UNESCO listing remains in place today, but the argument
[23:20] Speaker 1: over how Hashima Island's forced labor history is presented has
[23:23] Speaker 1: never been fully resolved.

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