AN EERIE island with a dark past of slavery is said to be the final resting place of up to 1,300 abused civilians and prisoners of war.
Hashima Island, abandoned for 40 years and now deemed too dangerous for exploration, is so spooky it made for the perfect lair of a James Bond villain in the iconic 2012 film Skyfall.
The 16-acre island, also known as Gunkanjima, lies about eight miles from Nagasaki in southern Japan and is today a concrete jungle of deserted buildings surrounded by a massive seawall.
But long before it made a name for itself in Hollywood as the secret hideout of Bond villain Raoul Silva, it was a place much more sinister.
After discovering its coal resources in 1887, Mitsubishi bought Hashima Island in 1890 and set to work making it habitable for an army of workers.
Japan’s first large reinforced concrete building, a seven-floor miner’s apartment block, was erected on the island in 1916, promptly followed by a school, kindergarten, hospital, community centre, and other entertainment facilities for miners and their families to enjoy.
As Gunkanjima transformed into a bustling miniature society for some – with a population of 5,300 at its peak – it became a place of terror for many others, specifically Korean and Chinese prisoners.
Inmates and immigrants were hauled over to the island from 1930 until just after the end of World War II and forced to work under the harshest of conditions at the Mitsubishi facility.
Up to 1,300 conscripted labourers are estimated to have died on the island of various dangers including underground accidents, exhaustion, and malnutrition.
Those who survived their captivity went on to describe Gunkanjima as “Hell Island”, while others in large numbers recognised it as a relic of the “evils of industrialisation”.
It became home to a flood of new Japanese residents following the West’s triumph against Hitler in WWII – only for Japan’s coal industry to grind to a screeching halt in the 1960s when petroleum took over.
Mitsubishi was forced to close down operations on the island in January 1974 and it was soon cleared of all its inhabitants.
Hashima would remain closed for 35 years, undisturbed except by nature. It re-opened in April 2009.
Ownership of the island was voluntarily transferred to Takashima Town in 2002 and absorbed by Nagasaki City in 2005.
Although now open for tourism, more than 95 per cent of the island has been deemed unsafe and is strictly off limits during tours.
Researcher Takafumi Noguchi said: “Accumulated reinforced concrete ruins do not seem to exist except Hashima.
“Concrete structures built in ancient Rome are the only competitor, but they do not contain reinforcing steel.”
Interest in Hashima Island spiked in 2012 amid the release of James Bond blockbuster Skyfall, in which the desolate wasteland doubled as the secret lair for villain Raoul Silva, played by Javier Bardem.
Production notes simply refer to the haunting yet richly historical Gunkanjima as an “abandoned island off the coast of Macao”.
According to reports, Daniel Craig came up with the idea of filming on the island after meeting with Swedish filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad.
The movie buff had previously produced a short documentary in 2002 on the battleship-shaped Gunkanjima.
While they were shooting The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Craig is said to have been inspired by Nordanstad’s experience.
The eerie island was approved for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 2015.
Japan today acknowledges the survivors of forced labour who inhabited the island and says “there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s” at Hashima Island.
