10. Nicknamed “Battleship Island”, the Japanese industrial island of Hashima served as a labor camp for the Mitsubishi Company during the Second World War
One of 505 uninhabited islands of the Nagasaki Prefecture, Hashima Island, commonly known as Gunkanjima or “Battleship Island”, is an abandoned island situated approximately 15 kilometers from the city of Nagasaki in southern Japan. Measuring just 16-acres, the small island became populated soon after the discovery of coal on Hashima in 1810. Purchased by Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha in 1890, who extracted 15.7 million tons of coal, several mine-shafts reaching up to one mile in depth were built, including one underground passageway connecting Hashima to a neighboring island beneath the ocean waters.
Becoming the site of Japan’s first reinforced concrete building, designed to protect against typhoons, Hashima rapidly took on the impression of a fortress. With the onset of the Second World War, the fortified island served its most infamous purpose: a labor camp for conscripted Korean and Chinese prisoners. In total, an estimated 1,300 enslaved prisoners died on Hashima as a result of forced labor by the Mitsubishi company. Reaching a peak population in 1959, reductions in global coal usage resulted in the abandonment of the island in 1974. Today, the preserved island remains a monument to history as a World Heritage Site.