Okunoshima

In 1929 the Imperial Japanese Army built a secret plant on Okunoshima to make poison gas. To hide it the island was left off maps, and workers were forbidden to tell even their families what they did there. Late in the war, students mobilized for war work were sent to the factory, and many workers and islanders were harmed by the gas. International treaties had banned chemical weapons after the First World War, and the army used them mainly in its fighting in China.

After the surrender much of the evidence was destroyed. The Okunoshima Poison Gas Museum opened in 1988 to set out the suffering the plant caused and to call for lasting peace, and schools now come here for peace education. Ruins of the gas storage sheds and the old power plant stand among the trees, and three gun batteries survive from the island's Meiji-era fortress.

The museum opens 9:00 to 16:00 with last entry at 15:40, and adults of 19 and over pay ¥150. Ferries cross from Tadanoumi port in Takehara, where the public car park holds about 200 cars for free. Today the island is a national-park resort, and about a thousand wild rabbits live on it.