The City That Died
The Most Crowded Place on Earth — Now Nobody Lives There
In 1959, Hashima Island had a population density of 83,000 people per square kilometer — the highest ever recorded on Earth. 5,259 people lived on a concrete island smaller than a city block, nine times denser than Manhattan. During WWII, Mitsubishi brought conscripted Korean civilians and Chinese POWs as forced laborers in the undersea coal mines. On April 20, 1974, the last residents boarded a ferry and never came back. The population is now zero.