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Ruin of a Japanese WWII Shipyard

The Kawaminami shipyard was opened in 1936 and went bankrupt in 1955. It had four huge bays and two large factory buildings. Through the war years it served as both a munitions factory, a drydock for construction of cargo ships, escort ships, and kaitens, and possibly also as a Prisoner of  War (POW) slave labor camp.  By some accounts up to 4000 POWs were forced to work here during wartime.

The main factory hall.

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Chutes and Ladders in a Haikyo Factory

It was the third time for me to set out in search of the Hume factory. The first time was on our inaugural haikyo road trip- we hit up Kappa Pia Theme Park and the Volcano Museum by day and searched for the Hume factory by night. It was pouring it down and we ended up climbing over a fence into a whole different factory, one that turned out to be live, with motion sensor security lights and big humming grids of transformers. Fail, but a great bit of adventure. The second time was solo, I hoped to tack it on as a chaser to the Shrine/Castle I went to a month or so ago. Fail due to train constraints and fading daylight. This time it was first on our list, and stood no chance of escaping exploration.

Main Warehouse.

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7 Massive Holes in the Earth

The Earth’s face is a pock-marked, scarified thing, riddled with enormous holes dug by human hands or caused by the caprices of nature. Deep ‘blue hole’ lagoons accrete within coral reefs, volcanoes tear the earth apart leaving enormous smoking craters, weak undergound sewage lines can lead to sudden sink-holes in the middle of cities, open-pit mines strip the hearts out of mountains, nuclear weapons tests blast whole islands out of existence.  Here are 7 awe-inspiring examples of such enormous holes.

Craters, mines, lagoons, sink-holes.

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Remnants of Kamaishi Iron Mine

Kamaishi Mine is ranked as the second best haikyo (ruin) in all of east Japan, according to one of the haikyo books I follow. Iron has been mined there since 1727, and Japan’s first blast furnace was built there in 1857. Production peaked in the 1970’s, with more than a million tons of ore coming out a year. In photos I’d seen it looked like a whole hillside of factory/mine buildings, though upon arrival it was clear the glory days were gone, with only a hillside of concrete foundations remaining.

A block of masonry stands before the factory’s hillside foundation

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The lonely ore-cart of Seigoshi Mine

Seigoshi mine hides its secrets well. Fronted by a live builder’s yard, shielded by a fence with a live antenna inside, overgrown, ramshackle, and falling down- if you can plough through all of that you get to the good stuff- lonely mine carts, ancient bottles of whiskey, LOST-like hatches complete with beeping machinery, and store rooms filled with boxes of TNT.

Waiting.

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The great machine hall of Taro mine

The derelict Taro mine lies at a generational crossing point- once a place where raw sulfides were dug from the earth, now it functions as a cosmic ray laboratory for a nearby University, capturing electrons from outer space in several large heavily wired pools. It was the first of four mines on our Iwate shopping list, ranked number 3 in all of East Japan.

Down on the Great Hall, from the third tier.

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