Hashima Island (meaning "Border Island"), commonly called Gunkanjima (meaning "Battleship Island") is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself. The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it. "Battleship Island" is an English translation of the Japanese nickname for Hashima Island, Gunkanjima. The island's nickname came from its apparent resemblance to a battleship, or gunkan (jima is a mutation of shima) due to its high sea-walls. It also is known as the Ghost Island. 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 retrieving coal from the bottom of the sea. They built Japan's first large concrete building, a block of apartments in 1916 to accommodate their burgeoning ranks of workers, and to protect against typhoon destruction.
In 1959, its population density was 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km^2) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km^2) for the residential district, one of the highest population density ever recorded worldwide. As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974, and today it is empty and bare, which is why it's called the Ghost Island. Travel to Hashima is currently prohibited.
credited to flickr users: origamikid, stuartfrisby, christophklemmt, beat8682 and elbauldejosete.files.wordpress.com, wikimedia.org, hipogrifos.files.wordpress.com
wow interesting island. great post. i thumbed you up. i am going to check over your whole site to see what other goodies you have in store.
check out my blog if you want Tourist-post and a site that specializes in tours, river cruises and cruises. affordable cruises tours there both very new but i hope you like them.
I just wanted to let you know what a success the TravelScoot was on my recent cruise.
I like it a lot - many folk have asked me about it and I tell them your website address.
http://www.travelscoot.com
... and the video
http://www.travelscoot.com/demonstration.htm
Sincerely,
Elisabeth
Very cool. Why is travel there prohibited? It looks like a potential tourist draw.iotrr
Why does this article read virtually word for word the same as the wikipedia article on Hashima Island?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island
Which came first? Who plagiarized whom?
Oh, nevermind, I looked at the history of the page on WIkipedia, it had this up at least as far back as December 2007, a month before you "wrote" this.