After our crazy rainy day, we were more than ready to leave Nagoya and head to Okunoshima, the highlight of the trip.  Many people, including Japanese people, don’t know about Okunoshima, a small island located in the Seto Inland Sea, the sea surrounded by Shikoku, Honshu and Kyushu.  Actually, when I told people where I was going many people thought I made a mistake and meant to say another, more popular island.  However, I did not.  There is a reason many people don’t know about the island, besides its relatively small size and inconspicuous location, but perhaps the government didn’t want you to know but I’m going to tell you!  Although the island origins lie in farming around the end of the 19th century the Japanese government built 10 forts on it to help fight the First Sino-Japanese war.  However, those forts were unneeded and soon after the Japanese government started produced poison gas on the island.  From 1929 to 1945, the Japanese government produced five different kinds of poison gas mainly used for the chemical warfare in China.  The Japanese government kept the island secret (even removing it from certain maps!) because Japan had signed a treaty saying that they would not be use chemical weapons so this isolated island was a perfect place for the government to carry out their secretive mission. Ruins of the factory and different storage units still remain on the island and are hauntingly fascinating.

Although still not highlighted as a top tourist attraction, such that Hiroshima is, the government has opened a small poison gas museum on the island to show the truth of the damage of poison gas. The curator of the museum, Murakami Hatsuichi said in a New York Times article, “My hope is that people will see the museum in Hiroshima City and also this one, so they will learn that we [Japanese] were both victims and aggressors in the war.  I hope people will realize both facets and recognize the importance of peace.”

And with the 10th anniversary of September 11 just behind us, I couldn’t agree more.