Nagasaki is a name the world remembers for terrible reasons.
On Aug. 9, 1945, a plutonium bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” fell on the city, killing more than 40,000 people in an instant. Together with the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the attack ended World War II and reshaped an entire region in ways that still echo today.
Nagasaki recovered. But decades later, this prefecture still carries a certain “cursed place” reputation — and nowhere is it more apparent than on the haunting island of Hashima.
Located just 9 miles off the coast of Nagasaki, Hashima has become the crown jewel among the roughly 500 uninhabited islands scattered across the region.
Locally known as Gunkanjima — meaning “battleship island” — it once served as a major coal-mining operation managed by Mitsubishi. The island, barely 1,600 feet long and 520 feet wide, housed more than 5,000 people at its peak, complete with a hospital, a school, and a scattering of shops.
Those buildings still stand today, though the island has been abandoned for decades, giving it an apocalyptic atmosphere that feels more like a zombie film than the modern Japan most people picture.
Perhaps that is exactly why it has become one of the most extraordinary tourist destinations in the country.
Hashima, the Symbol of Japan’s Industrial Decline
Hashima was just another unremarkable island off the Nagasaki coast until the late 19th century, when large seams of high-quality coal were discovered beneath it. Mitsubishi purchased the island and transformed it into a full-scale mining operation, relocating thousands of workers and their families to its shores.
Prosperity followed through the first half of the 20th century, and a dense, self-contained city took shape on the tiny landmass. Everything seemed to be working. The finest coal in Japan was coming from Hashima. Then war came.
Japan was embroiled in multiple conflicts throughout the 1940s. The Second World War was the defining one, but Japanese forces were also deployed across Korea and China.
The demand for manpower drained the mines. With the number of available miners dropping sharply, the company managing the operation turned to a brutal solution: using prisoners as forced labor. Men were worked without rest, given almost no food or water, and more than 1,200 of them died in the mines.
Some prisoners reportedly tried to swim to the mainland, only to be overcome by the powerful currents and waves.
The dark secret of Hashima went largely unacknowledged. When the war ended, the island’s rise resumed.
Coal remained indispensable through the 1950s and ’60s, and the battleship-shaped island entered its greatest era — eventually becoming the most densely populated city on Earth.
Schools, hospitals, shops, and even a small temple were built to serve a population that had no need to leave. Everything was within reach. The island was, in its own compressed way, complete.
Then, in the late 1970s, priorities shifted. Coal lost its importance, production collapsed, and the people left.
Hashima: A Visit Among Ruins
For decades, Hashima sat completely abandoned, its buildings slowly surrendering to salt air, encroaching vegetation, and time.
The modern city became a dystopian stage set, and on the mainland, legends began to take shape.
In Nagasaki, people spoke of mysterious lights seen on Hashima at night — of strange sounds drifting over from the island, as though it too had been cursed like the rest of the region — even though its golden age had come after the area’s greatest catastrophe.
Time passed, and in 2009 the Japanese government decided to write the island’s next chapter.
Hashima was opened as a tourist destination for devotees of abandoned places. Since then, several guided tours depart daily from the port of Nagasaki.
Each visit follows a different route, but all of them reveal the same slow unraveling — a kind of ode to the collapse of Japan’s industrial revolution.
Frozen in time, Hashima has become one of the most sought-after attractions in the region, something unthinkable just a few decades ago. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, the island is also visited regularly by structural engineers studying how abandonment and the passage of time affect building materials and construction methods.
The battleship island of Hashima offers one of the most singular experiences to be had in this corner of Japan — far removed from the country’s celebrated temples or the relentless energy of Tokyo and Kyoto. It was a place that once promised paradise, and ended as a nightmare everyone was desperate to escape.
