Japan’s Remarkably Cute Rabbit Island Has An Incredibly Dark History
The island of Okunoshima is now full of ludicrously cute bunnies but it for a 16-year period, it officially didn’t exist
Image source: Wikimedia Commons - Jdlrobson
The small island of Okunoshima in Japan is known for being the home of a lot of highly Intagrammable rabbits. It is more commonly - but rather unimaginatively - known as ‘Rabbit Island’ thanks to its estimated 1000 or so adorable twitchy-nosed residents. However, between 1929 and 1945, the island didn’t officially even exist and was removed from all official maps.
This reason for this was that back then, Okunoshima was the location of a major top-secret poison gas factory.
The dark history of Okunoshima
The small island of Okunoshima is located in the Inland Sea of Japan and is considered to be part of Takehara city, in the prefecture of Hiroshima. In the mid-1920s the Imperial Japanese Army Institute of Science and Technology decided it was the perfect location to develop chemical weapons. It was sparsely populated and a decent distance from Tokyo or any other major city.
One of the reasons for doing this was because Europe and the USA were similarly developing chemical weapons and consequently, Japanese powers at the time thought they should follow suit. Bizarrely, it was legal at the time for all this to happen. The Geneva Protocol was drawn up and signed by numerous countries (including Japan, the US, UK and Germany) in 1925, and went into effect in 1928. The Protocol allows for the development and storage of chemical weapons, it just forbids the use of them.
The fact that this was done in such secrecy, with the island even being removed from maps, did not bode well for Japan’s enemies. Between 1929 and 1945 the factory developed 6,000 tons of mustard and tear gas. These weapons were developed in secret because they were going to be used.
The second Sino-Japanese war was waged between 1937 and 1945. From 1938 to 1941, the Japanese forces used the deadly gasses developed in places such as Okunoshima to devastating effect. It is estimated that over 80,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed by the chemical weapons in just three years.
While developing these lethal poisons, the scientists on the island had lots of rabbits brought in to aid with their experiments. They were delivered in secret and used to improve the lethality of the gasses and poisons being developed there.
It would be nice to think that some of these test subjects escaped and it was their descendants that now fill the island being photographed by tourists. That was indeed the story for a while. Sadly, the Americans later revealed that in fact all 200 or so of the poor creatures that remained at the end of the war had been experimented on. They were euthanised and put out of their misery by US troops.
So where did all the current rabbits come from?
After the war, the island became a park with a ban on cats and dogs. The story goes that a group of schoolkids released eight rabbits on Okunoshima in 1971. Rabbits are famous for breeding like, well, rabbits and there are now an estimated 1000 of them roaming the island being photographed.
This has caused issues as there just isn’t enough food for such a huge population of the creatures to sustain themselves. Their success has destroyed the island’s ecosystem. Furthermore, visitors keep insisting on feeding the animals food such as cabbage, which causes bloating and doesn’t provide enough nutrients for a rabbit to be healthy. The rabbits need more constant food rather than what is happening now and their food supply is largely dependant on visitors.
The Poison Museum
While the old forts and the chemical weapon factory are still deemed too dangerous to visit, the legacy of Okunoshima island’s dark past is remembered at the Poison Museum.
Opened in 1988, it was to serve as a reminder of the horrors of war and in particular, the abhorrence of chemical warfare. The museum highlights not just what happens to the victims of poison gas attacks but also the truly awful working conditions of those who worked there. It also tells the history of the island, its forts and the role in the war.
The shared future of the poison museum and the rabbits
The Poison Museum has never been massively popular and the island’s nickname of Usagi Shima — Rabbit Island — reveals the true draw for the tourists. Thanks to the rise of social media and the cute appeal of the rabbits, Okunoshima is proving ever more popular with visitors and, as a result, there are more people learning about its dark history.
The curator of the museum, Hatsuichi Murakami, expressed his desire for the Japanese to remember what happened there.
“Both poison gas manufacturing and the atomic bombing happened in Hiroshima prefecture during the war. My hope is that people will see the museum in Hiroshima City and also this one, so they will learn that we were both victims and aggressors in the war. I hope people will realize both facets and recognize the importance of peace.” — Mr Murakami, NY Times
Given that rabbits were shipped to the island in secrecy to enhance the efficacy of notorious chemical weapons, it is somewhat ironic that they are now responsible for popularizing the place and revealing its history.
As Okunoshima continues to gain popularity with Instagram-eager tourists, a balance with the rabbit population’s welfare and visitors to the museum will hopefully become even more mutually beneficial. They are now a key part of revealing the dark history of the island.