Battleship Island

Filming began June 17, 2016 in Cheongju, South Korea and finished on December 20, 2016. The film reunites Hwang Jung-min with Ryoo Seung-wan, who directed the 2015 hit movie Veteran starring Hwang.[8] Production cost about five times more than the average locally produced film due to the massive lifelike sets.[9] While the island provided the inspiration for the plot, The Battleship Island was not filmed on location. The sets were built in Chuncheon and were designed to resemble the conditions of Hashima Island's community and mines during the 1940s.[10]

In its application to UNESCO for World Heritage status for Hashima Island, Japan acknowledged that Korean and Chinese forced laborers were used there during World War II.[40] The acknowledgement, which was only made after South Korea opposed the bid, stated "large number[s] of Koreans and others [...] were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites [including Hashima island]".[41][42] However, once Hashima Island was approved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2015, the Japanese reverted to whitewashing history. Two months later Fumio Kishida, then-Japanese Foreign Minister, contradicted the earlier acknowledgement that forced laborers were used at Hashima by saying that "[forced to work under harsh conditions] by the Japanese government representative did not mean forced labor".[43][44] Although UNESCO's World Heritage Committee stipulated that a monitoring mechanism to measure the degree to which the victims of Hashima Island are remembered be a prerequisite for the successful bid,[45] the island's official tourism website and tour program - operated by Nagasaki City - makes no mention of forced laborers and currently does not make any efforts to comply with UNESCO's requirement.[46]

Battleship Island

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Hashima Island (, or simply Hashima, as -shima is a Japanese suffix for island), commonly called Gunkanjima (, meaning Battleship Island), is a tiny abandoned island off Nagasaki, lying about 15 kilometres (8 nautical miles) from the centre of the city. It is one of 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture. The island's most notable features are its abandoned concrete buildings, undisturbed except by nature, and the surrounding seawall. While the island is a symbol of the rapid industrialization of Japan, it is also a reminder of Japanese war crimes as a site of forced labour prior to and during World War II.[1][2]

The 6.3-hectare (16-acre) island was known for its undersea coal mines, established in 1887, which operated during the industrialisation of Japan. The island reached a peak population of 5,259 in 1959. In 1974, with the coal reserves nearing depletion, the mine was closed and all of the residents departed soon after, leaving the island effectively abandoned for the following three decades.

Interest in the island re-emerged in the 2000s on account of its undisturbed historic ruins, and it gradually became a tourist attraction. Certain collapsed exterior walls have since been restored, and travel to Hashima was reopened to tourists on April 22, 2009. Increasing interest in the island resulted in an initiative for its protection as a site of industrial heritage.

After much controversy, the island's coal mine was formally approved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2015, as part of the Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution series. Japan and South Korea negotiated a deal to facilitate this, in which Korea would allow Hashima Island to be included, while Japan would cover the history of forced labor on the island. Instead, Japan created a museum denying that forced labor ever occurred on Hashima.[3][4] In 2021, all other 21 nations on the UNESCO committee agreed that Japan had failed to meet its side of the deal, and asked Japan to acknowledge that forced labor occurred in exhibits on Hashima.[4][5] As of 2023[update], Japan has continued to refuse to comply with their request.

Battleship Island is an English translation of the Japanese nickname for Hashima Island, Gunkanjima (gunkan meaning warship, Jima being the rendaku form of Shima, meaning island). The island's nickname came from its resemblance from a distance to the Japanese battleship Tosa.[6]

Coal was first discovered on the island around 1810,[7] and the island was continuously inhabited from 1887 to 1974 as a seabed coal mining facility. Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha bought the island in 1890 and began extracting coal from undersea mines, while seawalls and land reclamation (which tripled the size of the island[citation needed]) were constructed. Four main mine-shafts (reaching up to a kilometre deep) were built, with one actually connecting it to a neighbouring island. Between 1891 and 1974, around 15.7 million tons of coal were excavated in mines with temperatures of 30 C and 95% humidity.

Beginning in 1930s and until the end of World War II, conscripted Korean civilians and Chinese prisoners of war were forced to work under very harsh conditions and brutal treatment at the Mitsubishi facility as forced labourers under Japanese wartime mobilisation policies.[1][9][10][11] During this period, many of those conscripted labourers died on the island due to various dangers, including underground accidents, exhaustion, and malnutrition; 137 died by one estimate;[12] about 1300 by another.[13]

In 1959, the 6.3-hectare (16-acre) island's population reached its peak of 5,259, with a population density of 835 people per hectare (83,500 people/km2, 216,264 people per square mile) for the whole island, or 1,391 per hectare (139,100 people/km2) for the residential district.[14]

As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down across the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially closed the mine in January 1974, and the island was cleared of inhabitants on 20 April.[15]

Today, its most notable features are the abandoned and still mostly-intact concrete apartment buildings, the surrounding seawall, and its distinctive profile shape. The island has been administered as part of Nagasaki city since the merger with the former town of Takashima in 2005. Travel to Hashima was re-opened on 22 April 2009, after 35 years of closure.[16]

The island was owned by Mitsubishi until 2002, when it was voluntarily transferred to Takashima Town. Currently, Nagasaki City, which absorbed Takashima Town in 2005, exercises jurisdiction over the island. On 23 August 2005, landing was permitted by the city hall to journalists only. At the time, Nagasaki City planned the restoration of a pier for tourist landings in April 2008. In addition a visitor walkway 220 meters (722 feet) in length was planned, and entry to unsafe building areas was to be prohibited. Due to the delay in development construction, however, at the end of 2007, the city announced that public access was delayed until spring 2009. Additionally the city encountered safety concerns, arising from the risk of collapse of the buildings on the island due to significant ageing.

The island is increasingly gaining international attention not only generally for its modern regional heritage, but also for the undisturbed housing complex remnants representative of the period from the Taish period to the Shwa period. It has become a frequent subject of discussion among enthusiasts for ruins. Since the abandoned island has not been maintained, several buildings have collapsed, mainly due to typhoon damage, and other buildings are in danger of collapse. However, some of the collapsed exterior walls have been restored with concrete.[18]

When people resided on the island, the Nomo Shosen line served the island from Nagasaki Port via Ijima Island and Takashima Island. Twelve round-trip services were available per day in 1970. It took 50 minutes to travel from the island to Nagasaki. After all residents left the island, this direct route was discontinued.

Since April 2009, the island has been open for public visits,[16][19] although there are restrictions by Nagasaki city's ordinance.[20][21]Sightseeing boat trips around or to the island are currently provided by five operators; Gunkanjima Concierge, Gunkanjima Cruise Co., Ltd., Yamasa-Kaiun, and Takashima Kaijou from Nagasaki Port, and a private service from the Nomozaki Peninsula.

In July 2015, at the 39th UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC) meeting, South Korea formally withdrew its opposition to Hashima Island being on the list. Japan committed to acknowledging the issue as part of the history of the island, and to specifically note that "there were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites [including Hashima Island]".[25][26][27][28] Japan also claimed to be "prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember the victims such as the establishment of information centre".[25][26][29]

The Japanese politician Kko Kat [ja], a close ally of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was to manage the preparation of the sites.[5] The Japanese government gave Kat's private company, the National Congress of Industrial Heritage (, NCIH), a budget of at least 1.35 billion yen. Even before the opening of the first museum covering Hashima, Kat used part of her budget to publish a series of articles and videos that denied that Koreans were ever forced to labor on the island.[34][35] This includes videos that single out and attempt to discredit individual Korean survivors.[36][37]

The IHIC's displays were based mostly on Kat's primary sources, all of whom were based in Japan. Only one ethnic Korean had their testimony presented in the exhibit; he was a young child on the island and did not recall what the labor conditions were like or experiencing discrimination. Some of the testimonies (all from ethnic Japanese residents) explicitly deny that Koreans were discriminated against. Most testimonies are reportedly from people who were children on the island or left the island at a young age, and had little actual contact with Korean laborers there.[40][5][41] ff782bc1db