gunkanjima

a photo collection

The "gunkanjima" island in Nagasaki, named because it looks like a certain class of battleship, is actually named Hashima. It was a coal mine in operation into the mid-70's, featuring at times "forced labor" (slaves) from Korea. It's tiny, but was home to 5,000 people (miners and their families), who worked a mine more than a kilometer deep and so spread out that it connected to shafts from other islands.

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