Okunoshima. An island located in the sea near Hiroshima. Packed with bunnies. And abandoned gas factories from World War II. Sounds interesting right? And so we took a 2 hour train to a tiny village somewhere between Hiroshima and Kobe, and took a boat to this beautiful island.

It looks really tropical, turquoise waters and palm trees and all! And when you enter the island, there are rabbits everywhere! Cute, fluffy, colorful rabbits!! Yay!

But this island holds a very dark secret. During World War II, there were secret factories that produced very nasty poison gas, meant to cause the enemy tremendous pain. The island was so secret that it wasn’t even displayed on maps at that time. If you wonder where all the cute bunnies come from, just imagine what they would have used as test subjects… After the war, the factories were closed, the bunnies escaped and repopulated the island. The military facilities were abandoned, but so were the remaining bottles of poison gas. It is said that these are buried somewhere on the island and the government refuses to clean them up in an attempt to deny what happened on okunoshima. It’s a bit silly, since the factories are still there and are proof of the poison gas production…

Nowadays Okunoshima is a recreation island with beaches, golf parks and camping grounds. But we ofcourse went to explore the old ruins (and cuddle the bunnies).

 

Going through a small tunnel, a huge, concrete, overgrown building with broken windows appeared. This was the factory where the poison gas was produced. The people back then wore protective clothes, yet many of them got sick from the nasty gas. It’s a weird feeling to walk around there. Technically you aren’t allowed to go inside but since there was nobody there, we quickly ran inside to take some photos.

 

 

 

After that we looked for the abandoned laboratory and storage facility. The laboratory had been in use after the war, so there are all kinds of weird things in there. It was really really scary.

 

In this building used to be huge storage tanks. Here we found  a strange hidden altar with folded origami birds and statues…

We decided to climb the mountain to find more ruins, but since it was around 38 degrees it was an extremely tough ordeal to climb the hundreds of overgrown stairs… On the top were more ruins, but also a family of thirsty bunnies! Ward gave them water and they were so happy, they all followed him around.

 

This huge tower was more than 200 meters tall, standing on top of the mountain, high enough to carry the electricity cables right across the ocean from the mainland:

We rented a bike and explored the rest of the island.

 

 

More ruins with graffiti from the 1960’s:

 

Ward tried to climb a watertank but is was pretty dangerous since the ladder was completely rusted :s

 

 

We took the boat back and started the long trip back to Hiroshima. Okunoshima is a very, very interesting island because of the contrast and secrets it holds. On the one hand its a nice recreational island with beaches and thousands of cute bunnies, but then the bunnies are part of a dark history that still leaves its traces all over the island.