Hashima Island (端島), commonly called Gunkanjima (軍艦島; means: Battleship Island), is one among 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Nagasaki itself.
History:
The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island’s most notable features are the abandoned and undisturbed concrete apartment buildings and the surrounding sea wall. It is known for its coal mines and their operation during the industrialization of Japan. Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890 and began the project, the aim of which was extracting coal from undersea mines. They built Japan’s first large concrete building (To protect from Typhoons it was 9 stories high). In 1959, the 6.3-hectare island’s population reached its peak of 5,259, with a population density of 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km2, 216,264 people per square mile) for the whole island.
As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal…
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