Originally Posted by
AlwaysAisle
Thank you for posting about your visit to Gunkanjima. Gunkanjima is on my to do list next time I visit Nagasaki. I am glad that the tour is focused more on history aspect. Along with Ginkanjima, Yubari in Hokkaido and kita-kyushu tells history of coal mining in Japan, once was the major industry in Japan. Having Gunkanjima listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO is bringing light to the history of coal mining industry of the past in Japan. It is hard to imagine living at such island densely packing in concrete high rise buildings.
Yes, the tour focused on history, nothing about James Bond except for one movie poster in the museum. Actually, the mines were something of an engineering marvel with some shafts descending as deep as one kilometer with 95% humidity for the workers. I expected that the miners worked for low pay, but I learned that they earned four times the salary of high-paid government bureaucrats, so it was good pay for dangerous work, which probably made it easier for them to put up with the poor living conditions. Gunkanjima was a real "concrete jungle," the total antithesis of an island getaway on Okinawa or Hawaii. Nagasaki City and Prefecture have a lot of really interesting historical sites, one of which is Hirado, which I also hope to write about someday.