FaktowoThere is an island in Japan with more rabbits than people
Ōkunoshima in the Inland Sea is now a tourist attraction with hundreds of tame rabbits. A few decades ago it was a secret factory making chemical warfare gases.
Ōkunoshima is a small island with a circumference of about four kilometres, not far from Hiroshima. Only a handful of hotel and park staff live there permanently. There are several hundred rabbits, and they are the ones in charge here.
The animals are so tame that they run up to tourists as soon as they reach the landing stage. In Japan the island is simply called Usagi Shima, or Rabbit Island, and ferries from the city of Takehara run there every day.
A dark past
Between 1929 and 1945, Ōkunoshima was a secret production site for chemical warfare gases, chiefly mustard gas. The island was removed from maps at the time, and the workers were sworn to silence. Today a small museum, opened in 1988, tells this history.
Where did the rabbits come from? A popular version says they were laboratory animals, but historians point out that those were destroyed after the war. It is more likely that the current population descends from a few animals released in the 1970s by pupils on a school trip.
What is worth knowing
Feeding the rabbits is allowed, but only with suitable food. The island has no natural predators, but it does lack food, so the animals depend largely on tourists.
- Tanaka Y., “Poison Gas: The Story Japan Would Like to Forget”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1988
- Muzeum Gazu Trującego na Ōkunoshimie (Ōkunoshima Dokugasu Shiryōkan), materiały ekspozycji, miasto Takehara, prefektura Hiroszima
- Ministerstwo Środowiska Japonii, Park Narodowy Setonaikai – informacje o wyspie Ōkunoshima
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