The original name of Gunkanjima island was Hashima, but because it resembles a warship, everyone is used to calling it Gunkanjima. There is also a legend about the origin of the name of The Japanese Island of Warship, it is said that in the Second World War, when the high-altitude bombers of the US Military carried out aerial bombing, they mistakenly thought that the island was a warship, bombed many times, but how could not be bombed, only to find out that this is a small island, the name of The Island of Warships was derived.
Located about 15 kilometers southwest of Nagasaki City, Gunkanjima Isle is one of the 505 desert islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, with an area of only 0.063 square kilometers. Although the island is now deserted, it has more than 5,200 inhabitants at its peak, and its population density is more than 9 times that of Tokyo, making it the most densely populated island in the world. Even today, although some places are open for tourism, it is still easy to find some shell casings left over from World War II in the waters near Gunkanjima Island, and there are many aircraft fragments on the island, which is evidence of the bombing of Gunkanjima Island in the past.
Since 1974, the island has been uninhabited, and the facilities on the island have been unmanaged and abandoned. Managaha Island is very small, and it takes less than half an hour to get around the island. There are many shipwrecks in the waters near Managaha Island. The area around Managaha Island is full of white gravel, formed by coral erosion, and the scenery is very beautiful. But as everyone knows, this place was once a terrible hell, a hell island that devoured the lives of many laborers.
Japan's land is small and resource-poor, and domestic resources are difficult to support Japan's expansion ambitions, so the Japanese government will do everything possible to exploit the available resources in the country. They discovered that the seabed of Gunkanjima Island contained high-quality coal resources, which was a windfall for the resource-poor Japan, which began to be mined by the Japanese Mitsubishi Corporation in 1890. Japan's need for resources intensified at the start of World War II, sending more than 40,000 Chinese to Japan as laborers, 3,765 of whom were assigned to Gunkanjima. In addition to the Chinese compatriots on the island, there are many North Korean laborers, and the working conditions on the island are also extremely bad, and many people try to cross the sea to escape, and as a result, they are either drowned or beaten to death by the guards.
Japan has always felt that there are not enough workers, and has publicly advertised In the media that Gunkanjima is a paradise, deceiving and kidnapping many unsuspecting people to Gunkanjima. Laborers were sent to the island, with a population of up to 1,391 people per hectare, which was 9 times more dense than tokyo at that time, making it the most densely populated place in the world at that time. Gunkanjima island was originally made up of less than a third of the current shoal and reef, where coal mines were dug on a small scale. After Mitsubishi took over, it carried out six land reclamations from 1897 to 1931, which eventually formed its current scale.
The laborers dug coal here day and night, and soon the coal near the surface was dug up, and the Japanese forced them to continue digging down to a depth of 1,000 meters below sea level, and the work site was not only hot but also extremely dangerous, with gas leaks and landslides at any time. The laborers engaged in intensive labor, but the food was nothing that could not be called food, such as the residue left over from the squeezed soybean oil, and lived in a place full of filth and mosquitoes, and over time, their bodies were left with only skin and bones. The islands of the Land of Bullets are full of the blood and tears of the miners. The tragic fate did not end until the victory in World War II, when 722 Chinese laborers and 1442 South Korean laborers were mutilated to death on Gunkanjima Island.
In 2009, Japan reopened Shogun Island as a tourist attraction for tourists from all over the world, and in 2015, Gunkanjima was officially inscribed on the World Heritage List.