Abandoned City 2: Hashima Island, Japan

Courtesy Mario Gallucci
One of the sagging apartment blocks on Hashima Island, Japan. At one time, units like this housed inhabitants of the most densely populated city on Earth.

Hashima Island is a small, 15-acre outcropping of rock off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. Although tiny in size, the island was important in magnitude: It was a major coal mining center for Japan for almost a full century. The island sits atop ­a coal deposit that descends well into the ocean floor beneath. Once it was tapped, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation purchased Hashima from the local families who owned it in 1890. That's when the heyday of Hashima Island began.

Since it’s located about 18 miles from Nagasaki, it made more sense for Mitsubishi to build housing on the island, rather than ferry its employees to and from the island every day. Squat concrete apartment blocks were constructed one at a time. Space was at a premium, so the buildings went up instead of out, and families were jammed together in cramped lodging, sharing bathrooms and kitchens.

Amenities like a movie theater, doctor’s office, arcades, restaurants and bars were added later, and the city became a thriving, microcosmic community. The entire complex was linked via underground tunnels. At its peak in 1959, Hashima Island was the most densely populated city on Earth, with 5,259 inhabitants on the small, rocky outcropping [source: Burke-Gaffney]. That’s 835 people for every 2.5 acres.

Not everyone who lived on Hashima Island did so by choice. During World War II, the Japanese government forced Chinese and Korean laborers to work on the island. As many as 122 of the 500 Koreans forced to work from 1939 to 1945 in the coal mines beneath Hashima Island died during their internment [source: Dong-A].

After World War II, employees found their lives on the island much improved. Modern luxuries like televisions, radios and the movie theater were introduced post-World War II. And the formerly unvegetated island sprang to life with rooftop gardens planted and maintained by the island’s employee-residents. The golden age of Hashima Island was pretty short-lived, however. In January 1974, with petroleum supplanting coal as the world’s preferred energy source, Mitsubishi revealed the mine would be closed. By the following April, the last of the island’s residents were ferried onto the mainland, and the island was permanently closed [source: Burke-Gaffney].

Left behind are the relics of what was once a densely populated city, built atop an uninviting slab of rock. The doctor’s office still contains an X-ray machine and examination chair with overhead lamp. Broken children’s toys can be found in empty residences within the apartment blocks. The tunnels that connected the city are passable, but now emblazoned with graffiti. Old television sets and stoves stands as evidence of the existence of their former owners.

The structures of the island are in remarkably good shape, considering their more than three decades of neglect. Some stone walls have caved and crumbled, but the concrete structures remain largely intact. Windows are broken and railings along the apartment’s balconied corridors are in a dangerous state of disrepair, but corridors within the company’s offices are surprisingly undamaged. The city continues to sit silently offshore, an abandoned ghost island, its only inhabitants stray cats and the occasional illegal visitor. The island may enjoy more visitors in the future, though. Japanese officials have applied to make Hashima Island a World Heritage Site [source: Dong-A].

Find out about how coal created another modern abandoned city on the next page.