When I first read about this, it seemed like a story straight out of Lost - strange facilities on a secret island, underhanded activities that affected the lives of those involved and of course, all those rabbits. Well, perhaps I am stretching it a bit, but that was my initial impression. What I am referring to is the creepy history of Okuno Island.
Okuno Island is a tiny island located in Takehara which is one of the cities located in Hiroshima Prefecture. Incidentally, I must note that some articles refer to this island as Okunoshima while others refer to it as Okunojima. The latter might be a completely different island altogether but the poison gas reference in both cases made me think otherwise.
So what's this island all about? Well, apparently this island is quite important to Japanese history. It has a nefarious past as having a poison gas factory which were used in some weapons. The factory was established in 1929 and was in use until after the Second World War. This report claims that more than 6,000 tons of poison gas were produced here. According to some sources, mustard gases along with phosgene, chlorine, cyanide and tear gas were created here.
From what all the different sources claim about this plant, chemical weapons made via this factory were mainly used against China during the Second World War. Isn't it frightening to come across a death toll/injury list that tallies up to 80,000? By the way. if you are wondering about the rabbit reference, here's the story behind it. Turns out, there is a huge population of rabbits on that island which is claimed to be the descendants of wartime bunnies. What do I mean by wartime bunnies? They are those rabbits that had gases and whatnot tested on them in labs.
It was quite touching to read about the efforts by local authorities to create more awareness about the island's dodgy activities. The Okunojima Toxic Gas Museum aims to educate everyone and inform the public about the dangers of toxic gases. It is also basically a very good argument against the use of chemical weapons in anyway. On that note, is it just me or was it especially sad to read that those who lived through the Hiroshima bombing are some of the regular visitors to this museum?
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