The main factory hall.

History on the place has been hard to come by definitively. According to official POW internment records, it never had POWs. According to other sites it did. It may be a simple mix-up of names, as there was another infamous POW camp in Nagasaki harbor that also built ships, and was also called Kawaminami. Either way, it was far from uncommon for POWs to be made into slave labor. Mitsubishi became famous for its `hellships`, transports loaded down with POWs sent to factories all over Japan and Manchuria, and for the factories themselves, which often had no heating even in the depths of winter.

I discovered that Osarizawa mine, the haikyo I went to in the Tohoku area, which had the brilliant blue pools and is still being operated by Mitsubishi to this day, was a site of slave POW labor. 503 American POWs worked there, claiming the mining techniques and equipment were as primitive as those of centuries earlier. Here`s an extract from a site titled `Mitsubishi: Empire of Exploitation` about conditions in Osarizawa-

“The mine was cold and damp and had icicles hanging from the ceiling”, Kenneth Calvit recalled. The prisoners had to walk over two miles up a steep mountain road to get to the mine. “On one stretch of the road there was a cut in the mountain where the wind and snow were blinding, so we used a rope and would go hand by hand to keep from getting lost”, Calvit said. During the few months when snow wasn’t on the ground, the POWs would try to catch grasshoppers along the way, in a desperate search for protein to add to their watery soup. They had no mid-day meal from the company. Calvit also remembered the time ammonia leaked from pipes in the company’s refrigeration plant into the vat of soup — which was served to the POWs anyway.

But what the prisoners remembered most was the terrible cold, how they were only allowed two hours of heat per day, and how, when they tried to bring a few scrap timbers from the mine to put in the little barracks stove, the company guards would take it from them. “At times I thought I was going to freeze to death”, David Summons said.

The stories of this time are fascinating and horrifying. POWs who were too terrified to speak, who died by their scores of pneumonia, injuries, disease. Also there are the stories of courage, the sabotage done to the factories by men unwilling to help the enemy cause, the men who took control of their labor camps the moment they heard the war was over and marched their once-overlords to the city to be arrested by occupying forces.

I`ve spent hours perusing documents, maps, and photographs from that time now, and feel I`ve only scraped the surface. In history class in the UK I only learned about the war in the European theater, I knew nothing of it in the Pacific. Every time I come across some of that history directly, whether it`s incidentally while holiday-making on Saipan or as part of my haikyo `explorations`, it hits me hard that there was this whole side to a war that I knew nothing about. The misery was not limited to Europe. It happened all over this country also, and all around its orbit (Manchuria [occupied China], Saipan, Guam, etc..)

Can you imagine being a world war 2 POW in a Japanese labor camp? It must have been one of the most alien environments imaginable. In their first week Allied soldiers were forced to learn Japanese numbers so they could know when they were being called, but beyond that nothing said around them would have made any sense. They survived on a diet of mostly rice, in portions that decreased as the war progressed more and more poorly. The discipline they were exposed to was often iron-clad and brutal, with executions commonplace, leaving prisoners in a perpetual state of shock and humiliation. They spent their days alongside drafted Japanese and Korean workers building ships for the enemy.

Prisoners in camp Fukuoka #2B, situated just outside of Nagasaki, clearly saw the mushroom cloud and blast of the atomic bomb dropped on that city.

I found one document that was a list of all the POWs killed in Fukuoka #2B. A large number died from penumonia, with others dying from colitis, and a few from crushing, burning, drowning while at work.

I found a list of POW camp orders, direct from the Camp Commander through the Japanese interpreter. The Japangrish is slightly comic, but the reality is stark. They were prisoners, and they had to do what they were told.

Monday July 5, 1943
In accident at dockyard, the man did not help in boat accident. Two Dutch officers ran away. They are unfaithful and we are disappointed in them.
You must salute from the heart.
Do not say Nip or Jap. It is just as bad as saying Yank.
No reading after 9 P.M..

Sept. 4 [1943]
The Sgt. Major is the N.C.O. of the week. There will be no mistakes. Men will stop sleeping in the latrine.
All men are responsible for all men.
Watch and check each other.
Drillers are very good, the under ship are very lazy. POW No. 341 is no good at picking up iron.

Oct. 8. [1943]
The Sgt. Major really expects you not to happen. You may bathe when the water is fired.
You have a new galley hancho (mess sergeant) make him good. Salute from the heart.
Use water sparingly.
Try not to have fire.

Dec. 31 [1943]
Unnecessary things are going on at the docks – there will be heavy, heavy punishment. Officers and room-chiefs are responsible.
All men receive food as well as lunch – why should 6 or 7 be hungry. They are smuggling time from watchmen to bake food. Therefore they are lazy.
All buying and selling is forbidden.
New Year tomorrow so nothing filthy – live happily in the camp.
The galley hancho (mess sergeant) feels very bad because people try to improve upon his cooking.
Our camp is the talk of the town of Nagasaki on the food-proposition. Don’t let it happen from any view point. The supply sergeant says keep your brooms dry.

Jan. 19 [1944]
Camp authorities want everybody to be happy.
To keep happy very much responsibility of room chiefs at dockyard and camp from any view point. Salute from the heart.
Gargle twice daily.
Navy officers at dockyard say many things have been going on recently. You must swear not to do it again.

More like this on this very thorough POW site.

I came to the shipyard without knowing much about it, and despite the information above I still don`t know much about it directly, only by inference. I just know it was huge, and abandoned 55 years ago. It has simply been left as it was, though with all the machinery stripped out. It`s falling to pieces and obscured by scrubby trees.

I didn`t have long to explore, as I had to get back for the last train, then onto a plane back to Tokyo, but there wasn`t much to investigate. With ruins of this age, you`re looking at bones. There`s no detritus left, none of the stuff of everyday life. All that`s left are the things that don`t rot and can`t be stolen.

The front.

Lower tier.

View into the lower tier.

View into the main factory.

Main Factory.

One of the 4 drydocks.

End of the drydock railings.

You can find more ruins explorations in the galleries:

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In actuality, though, there are far more dark spots on the map than you’d imagine. The general view that every square inch of land is worth a bazillion dollars is just not true. There are gaps in the façade that whole towns have fallen into, along with bizarre abandoned theme parks, ruined U.S. Air Force bases, and the tawdry remnants of pay-by-the-hour love hotels.

These places are known as haikyo, the Japanese word for ruins — and Japan has plenty of them.

Based on over six years of actively exploring these haikyo, I’ve put together a list of the 10 most beautiful, most historic and most interesting. Read on to see these amazing forgotten gems, and click on the images to see more.

10. Yamanaka Lake’s Lost Bunker
The underground bunker haikyo by Yamanaka Lake in the shadow of Mount Fuji is one of the strangest abandoned structures I’ve ever explored. I stumbled upon this bizarre spot in an unpopulated and obscure part of the Japanese countryside while hiking. I knew nothing about its history.

At first I thought it must be the headquarters of a cult — maybe Aum Shinrikyo, the one that bombed the Tokyo subway with sarin gas in 1995.

A sigil of 5 unknown logos formed a cross on the inner wall of the bunker, but none of the other explorers wandering the halls while I was there could recognize them.

Finally, the mystery was solved by a fellow explorer who had found a magazine featuring one of the logos at the location. The bunker belonged to the brokerage firm Sanyo Securities, which went bankrupt in 1999.

9. Ashio Dozan Ghost Town
Ashio Dozan was a mining town in the mountains some 200 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, and infamous in Japanese history as a site of extreme environmental damage. The town was mostly abandoned 40 years ago, the mines and factory shut down, and new standards in environmental care called for at the highest national levels.

It had been a copper mining and processing town for over 400 years. At its peak, it supplied over a third of Japan’s entire copper supply. But in the process, the nearby mountains were poisoned with sulfurous acid gas from the plant’s smelters.

Now it’s a creaking conglomeration of fading facilities — a power station, the factory, numerous barricaded mines, a train station, a temple, a school, and a small town of tumble-down wooden apartments, haunted only by a few aged holdovers who have nowhere else to go.

8. Keishin Radiology Hospital
The Keishin Hospital in Kanagawa prefecture was once a pre-eminent site of super high-tech radiology equipment, leading the charge as Japan raced into the modern era. Some 20 years ago that dream fell by the wayside, and the place was left to the vandals.

They tore out everything that could be torn out, leaving only a few metal fixtures too heavily stapled down. Then came the taggers, followed by the true graffiti artists, the young people shooting documentaries, and the cosplay kids playing truant from school. Keishin has a whole other life now that it’s dead.

7. The Russian Village Theme Park
A gigantic complex without any rides and built in the middle of nowhere, the Russian Village Theme Park in Niigata is an almighty folly. It opened in 2002 but closed only 6 months later for lack of visitors.

The major attractions were a huge mammoth hall, in which the genuine fake bones of a prehistoric woolly mammoth were on display, and a grand Russian-style church for fantasy wedding retreats.

The place was already in tatters when I went to visit. In souvenir shops, Matroska dolls lay smashed and scattered. Mannequins stood on the weedy walkways. A stuffed swan guarded a hallway, having broken free of its glass case.

6. Osarizawa Factory and Mine
Mining of gold and copper at the legendary Osarizawa mine began around 1,300 years ago, with the last of the smelting facilities closing down in 1978. Now the site is owned by Mitsubishi, who run guided tours around the highlights and a museum for 1,000 yen.

One legend of Osarizawa mine involves a gorgon-headed lion with the wings of a phoenix, the legs of a cow and the head of a snake. Its roar and monstrous appetite for children terrified the nearby villagers, who urged the village’s wisest old man to go battle it on the mountain top. The old man had long gray hair, and went to battle the beast in a series of 6 dreams. In the final one he managed to slit open the beast’s belly, from which poured gold, copper, and lead.

The vibrant blue color of the water in the pools is probably due to dissolved copper or a solution of copper sulfate used to precipitate out the purified solid metal.

5. The Toyo Bowling Alley
The Kanagawa Toyo Bowl was one of several 1980s alleys built during Japan’s bowling boom by Hideki Yokoi, a man with a true rags-to-riches story.

Yokoi came to Tokyo with nothing in 1928, when he was just 15 years old. By 1957, he had become the manager of a bowling alley and department-store chain. In 1958, he was shot by a Yakuza gangster for 20 million yen in outstanding debts — but he survived. In 1987, he built the Toyo Boru. It had 108 lanes, and was the second biggest bowling alley in Japan. In 1991, he bought the Empire State Building in New York.

The alley went bankrupt at the same time as Yokoi’s holding company in 1999. Its lanes were stripped of wood, and its gambling halls of machines. It has sat empty ever since.

4. Akasaka Love Hotel
A love hotel is much the same as a roadside motel, though built with only one purpose in mind — it’s a place for people to go when they don’t have a private place of their own. Rooms can be rented by the hour (a “rest”) or for the whole night (a “stay”).

The Akasaka Love Hotel is situated at the far end of a strip of love hotels on a quiet country road in western Tokyo, and clearly suffered for the lack of passing traffic. It was built only 11 years ago, but closed after just 3 years in business.

Love hotels are infamous for their gaudy “fantasy” rooms, decked out in vivid Day-Glo colors and with so little taste that they can still shock and awe, even in ruin.

3. Matsuo Ghost Town
Matsuo mine in the north of Japan opened in 1914 and closed in 1969. In its heyday it was the biggest mine for sulfur in the Eastern world. It had a workforce of 4,000 and a wider population of 15,000 people, all of whom were accommodated in a makeshift city in the mountains of Hachimantai Park.

The city was known as the “paradise above the clouds” for its comparatively luxurious apartment blocks and near-constant ebb and flow of mist. That same mist nearly prevented me from finding the place at all.

I drove on featureless roads up and down oddly rolling hills for nearly an hour before the first of 11 giant apartment blocks finally emerged from the mist, like granite crags on the hillside.

Walking through the empty corridors I felt my love of ruins reinvigorated. The mist surrounded me, tamping the world down to just my small pocket of existence. I walked the length of three blocks in awe. I climbed to the roof, careful over rotten-through concrete steps, and looked out into the thick enveloping fog, and remembered why I go to these odd places.

2. Fuchu U.S. Air Force Base
The abandoned U.S. Air Force base in Fuchu is a vine-slathered memento from the early days of Japanese-American war and peace, built shortly after World War II in co-operation with the still-active nearby Japan Self-Defense Force Base, and abandoned in the 1980s.

Its huge twin parabolic dishes are still visible from the exterior — though now half-eaten up by the passing decades, rusted red and bobbing like hole-riddled yachts on the sea of green jungle. Its roads swim with weeds and trees shot up through the cracks, and its barracks buildings glisten with waterfalls of rushes and creepers, windows and doors barely peeping through the shadowy gaps.

Going in the base was out of the question, but by shooting through the fence and borrowing photos from intrepid explorers who had braved charges of trespassing, I can shed some light on what the place looks like now.

1. Sports World Theme Park
Sports World is a massive theme park, featuring a hotel, large mini-golf course, gym, dive pool, wave pool, swimming pool, log flume, speed flume, triple tube-flume, and inner-tube rushing river, all in ruin. It was built in 1988 and abandoned only 10 years later, falling prey to its out of the way location and its proximity to the then-new Disneyland.

It’s an explorer’s dream come true, 20 years abandoned, overgrown, but still relatively intact, set in a truly gorgeous forested mountain area. There are terrifying screaming monkeys and birds at night, models on fashion shoots by day, and all manner of ways to entertain oneself clambering, clowning, and investigating the rest of the time.

Sports World was the first haikyo I overnighted in. I brought along a tent and arrived under cover of darkness. I ended up sleeping on the tatami mat floor of the park’s fairly pristine abandoned hotel. The next day I awoke to a breathtaking view of rolling forested mountains to the horizon, a view unseen by anyone for years. That’s why I go to haikyo.

If you enjoyed these ruins explorations, you can find more in the galleries:

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Well, they do.

Ghost Towns are the ultimate haikyo (ruins exploration) experience. If you long to be Indiana Jones, this is where you need to go. This is where the mystery is. In the doctor’s office the scalpels are laid out for surgery. Battered wooden apartments are still filled with the weathered remnants of their old occupants. Doors hang open, plates sit with long-rotten food, calendars are still marked for some future date, left as they were.

Most ghost towns in Japan are built around mines, like abandoned gold rush towns in the American West. When the mine seams gave out the jobs went away and the people left. Soon, the place was abandoned.

Let`s take a look at 5 of Japan`s best.

1- Ashiodozan Ghost Town

Ashiodozan Mining Town in the mountains of Tochigi Prefecture is infamous in Japanese history as a site of extreme environmental damage- so much so the town was mostly abandoned 40 years ago, the mines and factory shut down, and new standards in environmental care called for at the highest national levels.

It had been a copper mining and processing town for over 400 years, at its peak supplying over a third of Japan’s entire copper supply, in the process though poisoning the nearby mountains with sulfurous acid gas from the plant’s smelters.

Now it’s a creaking conglomeration of fading facilities- a power station, the factory, numerous barricaded mines, a train station, a temple, a school, and a small town of tumble-down wooden apartments, haunted only by a few aged holdovers with nowhere else to go.

Degawa Power station.

Abandoned shrine to the gods of copper.

Smelter.

Ruined apartments.

More about Ashiodozan Ghost Town here.

2- Osarizawa Ghost Town

Mining of gold and copper at the legendary Osarizawa mine began around 1300 years ago, with the last of the smelting facilities closing down in 1978. Now the site is owned by Mitsubishi, who run guided tours around the highlights and a museum for 1,000 yen.

One legend of Osarizawa mine involves a gorgon-headed lion with the wings of a phoenix, the legs of a cow and the head of a snake. Its roar and monstrous appetite for children terrified the nearby villagers, who urged the village’s wisest old man to go battle it on the mountain top. The old man had long grey hair, and went to battle the beast in a series of 6 dreams. In the final one he managed to slit open the beast’s belly, from which poured gold, copper and lead.

Copper leaching vats turned blue with residual chemicals.

A tree branch poisons in the vat.

More about Osarizawa Ghost Town here

3- Matsuo Ghost Town

Matsuo mine in the north of Japan opened in 1914 and closed in 1969. In its heyday it was the biggest mine for sulfur in the Eastern world. It had a workforce of 4,000 and a wider population of 15,000, all of whom were accomodated in a make-shift city in the mountains of Hachimantai park. The city was known as the ‘paradise above the clouds’ for its comparatively luxurious apartment blocks and near-constant ebb and flow of mist. That same mist nearly prevented us from finding the place at all.

The complex of 11 apartment buildings was built over a few years from 1951. Each block stood four stories tall in reinforced concrete. The first floor was designed for young childless couples, with one 6-mat room and kitchen per flat, while upper floors were for couples with children, with one 8-mat room, one 6-mat room, and a kitchen. Compared to Japanese standards of the time they were very well-appointed apartments, with a central heating system, a flush lavatory and a garbage chute.

Apartment buildings emerge from the thick mist.

A regular apartment interior.

More about Matsuo Ghost Town here

4-Nichitsu Ghost Town

The ghost Nichitsu Mining Town sits cramped into a narrow valley at the head of a long and buckled road in the mountainous western edge of Saitama. It was once a thriving company town with hundreds of families, the women staying at home in their rickety timber apartments, the children at the large wooden high school, and the men down in the mines digging for tin.

But that was over 20 years ago- since then the town has been relentlessly pounded by avalanches and ravaged by decay. All around the buildings stand with their roofs and walls caved in, reeds shot through floorboards and decking, swingsets and see-saws over-awed by brambles and flurries of fallen leaves.

View from the rooftop walkways.

Old firetruck.

Bridge to the Doctor`s office.

Recuperation room.

Brain in a jar in the storeroom.

More about Nichitsu Ghost Town here.

5- Taro Ghost Town

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. The town it once supported had a population of over 5,000, and the town had it`s own community centre as well numerous other facilities.

The big machine hall.

Second tier of the factory.

An overgrown side-hall.

Community centre.

More about Taro Ghost Town here

If you enjoyed these ruins explorations, you can find more in the galleries:

All Haikyo

Sex Industry

WW II

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Ghost Towns

Strange

 

Michael John Grist has contributed haikyo articles and photography to the guidebook To Japan With Love, the website of world curiosities Atlas Obscura, and the print magazine outdoorjapan.com. His website was favorably reviewed by the Guardian newspaper.

An interview with him about haikyo will appear in the British print magazine Kindred Spirit in April 2010. His photography book `Ruins / Haikyo – Exploring Japan’s Abandonments` is currently seeking publication.

I took a few shots of it scraggled with greenery but they didn`t stand out. Now winter reveals its pale bones, most of them broken backwards and jiggling loosely on rusted hinges.

A Toyota.

SY and I cycled here from Tokyo, the same as I did the first time I came. It was an 80km round trip with 4 hours spent in the saddle. We also checked out the Red Blossom Restaurant, and another love hotel on the same strip called The Hotel Queen. I`ll put those up shortly.

Somebody climbed up.

Somebody called out- “Fight the Power!”

See the rest of the haikyo I`ve been to in the galleries:

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Sex Industry

WW II

Theme Parks

Ghost Towns

Strange

 

Russian Village theme park.

Okutama ropeway car

Fire truck in Nichitsu ghost town

Shin Shu Kanko hotel escalator.

Massage chair (go-kart?) from Toyoshin convalescent hospital

Yamanaka lake boats near the Resort Hotel

Seigoshi mine cart.

Sports World theme park back alley.

Abandoned jumbo jet in Seoul.

Gunma Ski Lift.

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See my full collection of Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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Kaiten facility observation point.

`Kaiten` means `sky change` or `change of the heavens`, and it was hoped the little two-seater midget submarines would dramatically turn the tide of the war. It was thought that manned guidance would ensure every kaiten was a hit, and since they were cheaply made and the pilots who steered them barely trained, it was hoped they would cause disproportionate amounts of damage.

Early designs incorporated an escape hatch that would allow pilots to bail out when the torpedo`s course was almost complete. That hatch was removed in later versions though, leaving only the greater glory of the Emperor, great personal honor, and a post-mortem promotion of two ranks, as reward for making the ultimate sacrifice.

The project was almost an abject failure. The kaiten were made too cheap to function well, and only a few American ships were confirmed sunk by them. Many missed, detonated early, detonated late, or simply failed to explode. Its hard to imagine the frustration and shame felt by the pilots who missed, and whose auto-detonation devices failed to work. Since the kaitens were essentially single-use torpedos, they had no method of propulsion or steering. Those that missed and failed to detonate would simply sink to the ocean floor like lead weights, probably cracking open due to poor construction before they reached any considerable depth, drowning the pilots inside.

Kaiten schematics.

Kaiten, along with kamikaze plane pilots, could be considered outgrowths of the infamous Japanese `banzai charge`, a notion deeply inbred into Japanese military and samurai culture. Surrender was simply not an option. When faced by a superior enemy, the answer was not to give in but to fight until every last man, woman and child was dead. It`s a somewhat alien concept, but one that is hard not to respect. They really thought they were the Empire of the Sun. They really thought foreigners were evil devils. They really believed their Emperor was a God. They were prepared to die to protect his Empire, and did so in vast numbers. There are arguments that the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were a necessary evil to force the Japanese Emperor into surrender, as had he not, the war could have continued on and on in guerrilla action until many more were dead.

Well, those are arguments proposed by others, and I don`t necessarily support them- I`m not an expert on the subject. What I want to talk about is my brief foray into that world, to a ruined kaiten suicide boat facility on the coast of Kyushu.

SY and I went as the second haikyo on our recent Kyushu haikyo trip- the first being Kyu Nagasaki Prison. The Kaiten base was a long cold walk from the train station, but well worth it. Three main structures remained, haunted by an old fisherman at the edge of the gun-turret pier, catching fish after fish and dumping them into his plastic bucket.

We started off with the factory, a large two room stone hall where they built the torpedoes. There was nothing left to indicate that anymore, certainly no schematics, no metal equipment, tools, only the stone walls and mechanic`s pits cut into the floor. It wasn`t very big, scarcely as large as you`d expect a facility making mini-submarines to be. It was open to the sky, quiet, and peaceful.

Looking through to the gun turret.

In the foreground are shallow pits, presumably to allow mechanics to get under the kaiten.

Second we walked up to the observation tower, once accessible by a metal bridge. Now the bridge is long gone leaving an expanse of cold grey water between us and the ghosts of the islanded structure. From there soldiers would man binoculars, searching the horizon for any sign of the incoming American fleet.

A pair of sneakers sat ominously beside this big hole.

Last was the gun-turret, the last line of defence against invasion. SY chatted to the old guy fishing, who tried his best to explain to her what each building was for. `Gyorai`, he said many times. Only later did we learn that meant `torpedo`. There`s the torpedo factory, here`s the gun-turret, there`s the observation tower.

Gun turret with observation tower in back.

Through a gun turret window.

SY chats to the old fellow with his bucket of fish.

All three almost in fish-eye; factory, gun turret, observation post.

It got dusky as we left.

It was cold, and I found myself waiting for a shiver of recognition, that sense that you`re connecting to something. Perhaps I felt it, I`m not sure. The place is now weathered and barren, projecting more the level of impersonal ruin you see at an ancient druidic stone circle than anything recognizable as a station of modern war. I wondered about how the men who had served here, who had trained here, who had boarded boats and submarines as kaiten pilots, would feel about me walking around now. Taking photos of a facility symbolic of their country`s last grasp for victory.

Would they look forwards these 66 years and think- “I`m glad that`s all done with.” Or would they feel an inchoate rage that we were there at all? I wondered on this as SY chatted to the old fellow, who had a lot of fish in his bucket and was constantly adding more. He was old enough to have been alive when this place was operational, old enough to have known the Emperor as a God. I mused on this for a while.

It got coldr as the sun sank behind the clouds, and we decided to leave. We smiled at the old fellow and thanked him for the information. As we began to walk away he got up and offered us one of his fish.

We were touched. It was still flopping in his hands. We declined, because how would we cook a fish when we were staying at a hotel? He smiled as he seemed to realize this, nodded, then went back to his fishing.

See the rest of the haikyo I`ve been to in the galleries:

All Haikyo

Sex Industry

WW II

Theme Parks

Ghost Towns

Strange