In 1972, Brian Burke Gaffney moved from Canada to Japan.

Eventually he settled in Nagasaki, a hilly coastal city in the south.

After coming to Nagasaki, I found an old house on the hillside.

He moved in and then he noticed something odd.

I could actually see Hashima from my hillside abode and it was really weird because I didn't

know anything about the island, but it was this angular uncannily similar to Alcatraz,

Hashima, an island just shy of 16 acres, not quite as big even as Alcatraz, nine miles

off the coast and packed with gray concrete buildings jutting into the sky.

And I just asked some of my neighbors, you know, what's that out there and they said

it's just abandoned island and nobody lives there now.

Less than a decade before Brian moved into his house on the hill, this island was teaming

with life.

People lived there, they worked there, they shopped there, they went to school, they went

to the movies, they had babies there.

At its peak, this island was once the most densely populated place on earth, until almost

overnight, everyone left.

I'm Dylan Thoris and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

Today, a trip to that island outside of Brian's window and the struggle over how to remember

it.

More after this.

The story of Hashima Island begins with coal.

...