Hashima, “Battleship Island,” is a concrete slab in the sea off Nagasaki that was once the most densely populated place on the planet, thousands of coal miners and their families stacked in high-rises on a rock, mining a seam that ran out under the ocean. When the coal ended in 1974 everyone left in a matter of weeks, leaving apartments, schools and a hospital to the typhoons. Korean and Chinese forced labourers died here in the war years, a history Japan was slow to acknowledge. PUBLIC boat tours to a small viewing area.
Hashima Island, Nagasaki (Japan)
See it on the map
