Okunoshima was once used as a top-secret location for chemical weapons testing. All that remains today are thousands of feral rabbits, whose lives may still be in grave danger.
Kei Nomiyama / Barcroft Media via Getty ImagesThe long - eared brownish wild coney enjoy dainty on Okunoshima , a.k.a Rabbit Island , Japan .
Okunoshima the diminished island about two miles off the coast of Takehara in Hiroshima Prefecture , appropriate rabbits to cast freely . Also make love asUsagi Jima , or Rabbit Island , Okunoshima attracts brute lovers from all over the world to pass some timber nestle time with its declamatory universe of savage coney .
But the island of Okunoshima also harbors a dark , imperial secret from World War II .
Kei Nomiyama / Barcroft Media via Getty ImagesThe long-eared brown wild rabbits enjoy treats on Okunoshima, a.k.a Rabbit Island, Japan.
Rabbit Island Today
Rabbit Island is accessible by a 15 - minute of arc ferry ride from Japan ’s mainland . Once there , holidaymaker can interact with the rabbit , feed them , and pet them . Current estimates put the number of cony at over 1,000 .
jj - walsh / Flickr.comA tourist fertilize a rabbit on Rabbit Island in September 2016 .
The locals on the island encourage tourist to interact with the hare as much as possible . There are tons of videos about the place , includingone such viral videofrom 2014 of a drove of rabbits play along a char with a bag of food .
jj-walsh/Flickr.comA tourist feeds a rabbit on Rabbit Island in September 2016.
The bunny love is unceasing as there are no predators on Okunoshima . The constant inflow of tourer willing to bungle the rabbit has precipitate an unsustainable universe gold rush of lapin . There are no cage and the rabbits are n’t kept as pets , in fact , officials on the island admonish people not to pick up or hold the rabbits , as they often will struggle to break detached .
Okunoshima is n’t exactly a agrestic wildlife asylum , either . Rabbit Island has road , construction , and a hotel . It ’s a part of Japan ’s National Park Resort system in the middle of the Seto Inland Sea of Japan .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMbsNz7DTrs
Lemon Loco DesignsThe abandoned poison gas facility on Rabbit Island as it stands today.
While Rabbit Island now is mostly a place of fluffy joy , it nurse an inauspicious history , and tourists have a fortune to explore that while on the small island .
Okunoshima’s Dark Past
How exactly the European cony came to the island in the first place is a bit of a mystery . However , most historians believe that the Japanese government brought hare to the island starting around 1929 for chemical artillery testing . Okunoshima served as a testing facility for poison gasnamely mustard gas , and farm more than six kilotons of the stuff during WWII — which was all tested on the rabbits .
Lemon Loco DesignsThe abandoned poison gas installation on Rabbit Island as it stands today .
Workers on the island were sworn to concealment . The government even erased the island from official maps to keep the project under wrapper . Historians estimate that the poison gas pedal manufacture on the once - dub “ Poison Gas Island ” vote out as many as 80,000 hoi polloi during Japan ’s invasion of China in the thirties .
Wikimedia CommonsJapanese Special Naval Forces at the Battle of Shanghai in 1937.
Then during the occupation after World War II , the American armed forces euthanized some 200 rabbits still hold on there . The Japanese government never full decontaminate the island , though . The local water supply may have vestige of poison gas in it that could pop the rabbit or even affect human .
Wikimedia CommonsJapanese Special Naval Forces at the Battle of Shanghai in 1937 .
But a group of schooling kids who let go eight rabbits onto the island in 1971 may have contributed to its rebirth and flourishing of bunny population . By 2007 , expert believed that there were 300 rabbits living on the island . The population continue to farm as the political science banned raw animals on the island as well as hunt .
Steffen Flor/Flickr.comA rabbit being fed.
The Future Of Rabbit Island Is Dark, Too
But the booming population of the rabbits also poses a danger to their future . There is not enough flora leave on the island to sustain such a large — and grow — population of rabbits that roam the island .
The cony also depend deeply on human visitant for intellectual nourishment , which is often in erratic provision . People bring cabbage , which is n’t the best intellectual nourishment for rabbits because they require a set of fiber . Rabbits also need to eat every day . On warm days , the rabbits may see an overmuch of intellectual nourishment . On cold days , there may be nothing at all if no one comes to the island .
Steffen Flor / Flickr.comA hare being fed .
It ’s fete or famine for the rabbits of Rabbit Island unless something can be done . While normal life sentence anticipation for the animals is around 10 years in domestic life , these bunny rabbit only hold out two old age .
Despite viral video of the balmy creatures mobbing tourist , that type of action is n’t necessarily for fun and games . Those lapin are hungry and athirst , and they clamor for as much intellectual nourishment as tourists can give them .
“ We continue to writhe target at the coexistence of the wild fauna with organization , ” Takashi Seki at the Ministry of the Environment reported . “ inordinate artificial intervention is unsuitable . ”
Indeed , in the case of a brighter future for these cony , here ’s to “ hopping . ”
jibe out Japan ’s abandonedHashima Islandfor more dark secrets from the country ’s industrial past or see how abandonedpet bunny rabbit are take over Las Vegas .
