Okunoshima-Island

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Okunoshima-Island was one of the sites of the Japanese poison-gas production. Here, beginning from 1926 the Showa-regime researched and produced chemical weapons secretly hidden from the world. Even the isle was erased from the maps and the name vanished from catalogues and lists.

Many sececy-efforts were made, just like:
The gas was produced by senior-high-school-students as most of the scientists capable of this were under international observation by foreign secret services. The students were unaware of the dangers of their work and many of them died or were seriously injured by dioxine-intoxication.
Many POW and Korean prisoners were working in the facilities, the protection-level was very low, so many suffer from chemical-weapon-injury up to now.
For the gas-tests, rabbits were bought from local markeds. Buying 10.000 rabbits from a big farm was not secret enough! So the lab-animals came from many different races!

To minimize the traffic necessary to run the facility, most of the food was produced on the island itself, which was generally spoken not enough. The leadership knew, that the protection suits (of PVC and leather) was not durable enough against a poison-concentration inside such a factory. Never the less, the suits were replaced only when completely used up, to keep secrecy! The Facility itself was completely out of date. Installing new equipment would have ment carriing workers to an island that did not exist, to install mashinery, that did not exist, to produce a weapon that did not exist.

After the evacuation of the facilities, the rabbits were let free and are now the only ground-living creatures on this island. There are ten thousends of rabbits on this piece of land!
IPPNW visits this site once a year with foreign students.
Today it can be seen from kilometers away due to its large power-mast.
Dr. Yukutake from the Tadanoumi hospital is looking after most of the poison-gas victims and is a well known expert on poison-gas injuries. He also cares of patients in Iran, injured by Iraqui Gas-Attacks.