Hashima/Gunkanjima Island and Its History
Hashima Island, or "Gunkanjima(Battleship) Island" as it is commonly called as its shape resembles that of a battleship, has been available for visitors to land on for the first time in 35 years, after the extensive restoration work done by the City of Nagasaki to make the island into a new tourist site. Hashima Island was built on the rock reef off the coast of Nagasaki, in order to provide a base for coal mining. Hashima Coal Mine was one of the major coal mines by Mitsubishi, and provided coal that fueled the fast economic development of the Meiji Period. However, the structural change in the energy industry in the 1960's from coal to petroleum led many of the coal mines to close, including Hashima. Residents quickly left, and all that was left were empty concrete buildings, and the whole island was abandoned. Michinori Sakamoto, President of the "Association to make Gunkanjima Island into a World Heritage site" says the island "symbolizes the warning from the future of the human kind, after we consumed all resources on this Earth." Tomohiro Shinkai, a board member of Oka Masaharu Peace Memorial Museum, the only peace museum in Japan that specializes in Japanese war crimes and colonizations in the fellow Asian countries, suggests that there is an important perspective missing in the glossy pamphlets that Nagasaki City made for prospective visitors to the Island.
