Helen LARDNER
Hashima Island, off Nagasaki in Japan, was created from the sea in 1870 to service coal mining below the seabed. The island played a key role in the foundation of modern industry in Japan, supplying coal for iron manufacture at Yawata Works (Nippon Steel) and contributing to the growth of its owner, economic powerhouse Mitsubishi.
After 1916, more than 30 multi-storied, reinforced concrete apartment buildings were constructed on the 1,200 m perimeter island, giving it the appearance of a battleship. At the height of its prosperity nearly 6000 people lived on Hashima Island - the most densely populated place on earth. Workers brought or created their families there and hospitals, schools, shops, markets and movie theatres opened. Workers had wealth and a dangerous lifestyle with residential buildings protecting the mine from the regular typhoons which battered the Island and took lives.
The coal mine closed in 1974. By April that year the island was deserted. Many residents were displaced against their will after a failed public campaign to allow them to remain in their homes. Friends of Gunkanjima (Battleship) Island are active today and proud of their former home.
Hashima Island is a crucible that we can use to examine the problems of industrial communities. Often focused on an exhaustible commodity or a time-limited technical process, the workers' communities are commonly bound together through a harsh lifestyle, adversity and the pursuit of wealth. What's left for the people when the industrial moment has passed?
Like Hashima Island itself, is this aspect of our cultural heritage too often abandoned to naturally erode and be returned to the sea? Can a change of use or the onset of tourists possibly conserve the heritage of industrial communities?