Bittersweet Infamy - #47 - Ōkunoshima (Rabbit Island)

Episode Date: June 26, 2022

Josie tells Taylor about the dark history behind one of Japan's most adorable tourist attractions. Plus: the mystery of the disappearing Sri Lankan handball team.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy. The shocking, the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, but the stories are always sweet. Josie, I understand you got a text message from your brother recently. Josie, I understand you got a text message from your brother recently. Yes, the day that the DeLorean, episode 46, the day that it hit the airwaves, my brother texted me the single text, Porsche 914. And I never got fully confirmation, but I'm fairly certain that that's the model of Porsche that our dad had. Whereas you had said that the model was...

Blue. Similarly, I had a conversation with my buddy Ali Jessa,'s a car guy like my dad and he asks me is your dad still driving that Corvette and I was like I fucking hope not because I said it was a Porsche oh so yeah my dad I fucked up father's day folks it's very me it's very me to like I'm so smart but I'm so dumb i got all the delorean shit right then i said my dad had a porsche and none of it mattered anymore and but like very sweetly my dad was clearly never gonna say anything about it until i sent him a text like disgusted with myself oh wait your old roommate knows the make of your dad's car but you don't

the make of your dad's car but you don't yeah that's really embarrassing huh a little bit yeah yeah it's not blue i'm not gonna say what color it is though because i'm clearly i'm picturing a completely different car in my head yeah you're too deep in now you just gotta get out of the pool i have to issue that retraction and i also also... Sorry, Dan. My mom had apparently a bone to pick with your description of Miss Wilmot's ghost. She said that it took over her entire garden. You told me this, and I'm horrified! I'm so sorry, Anna Maria. The articles that I read... You are so willing to just capitulate to my mother's you know anecdotal experience as opposed

to the research that you read huh yeah totally it's anna maria fair dues i'm not gonna fucking salt the wound my dude what i'm not gonna get up on here and be like you're wrong anna maria your experience is wrong no that stinks you said that she researched how to get rid of it and the best advice was move yes that was what happened she took over her entire garden she bought it because she liked the name of it which you know like mother like son right and then i've got one last matter to clarify from the delorean episode we have a lot of cleanup dude baby this is your mess to clean up actually oh no i'm sorry you describe michael j fox as your favorite canadian you're my favorite canadian i better be i fucking better be

okay so now that all of our loose ends are all tied up oh that was the mess okay i thought it was i mean that's pretty egregious i apologize from the bottom of my heart i apologize however i haven't decided yet if i'm gonna forgive you and i think that the only way that i can find it in my heart to forgive josie is if everyone listening to this right now goes and gives bittersweet infamy five stars on their podcast platform of choice, subscribes, leaves a review like Taylor, please forgive Josie. Don't break up the podcast. Then maybe, you know, maybe I can find it in my heart. You love a gimmick. That's not a gimmick. That's dead sincere. I'm ready to drop you if those reviews don't come in. Okay.

My dentist today who numbed out my mouth while I was drooling. Oh, so this is going to be a good episode. Oh, over myself. I was like, whenever you get a minute, it'd be great if you could write a Google review for us. for us you're kind of writing a google review in the sense that you're googling drool all over your mouth while you talk the dental hygienist asked me to at a separate occasion to write a google you gotta hustle for those reviews and you've got to find ways to incorporate them that sound organic. So there you go. That's true. With all that out of the way. I'm so sorry, Taylor. I love you. You want to hear a story?

You're my favorite Canadian. I want to hear a story from my favorite Canadian. So for this story, let's take a trip to the German region of Bavaria, home of Munich and Oktoberfest. And pretzels and beer. And in the case of today's Minfamous, it's the site of a most unusual sporting event. It's 2004. The Bavarian handball

team TSV Witteslingen is taking on some international competition from the island nation of Sri Lanka, located just below India, west of the Bay of Bengal. Yes. The game, by the way, is not the American version of handball with the wall that you might be familiar with. Oh. In European handball, the goal is to pass the ball forward amongst your team and get it into the opposing team's goal. Not unlike soccer, lacrosse, hockey, basketball, any net-based game. The sport, true to its name, is the most popular in Europe,

which may explain why the German team is convincingly beating the Sri Lankan team. Germans are competitive. Germans are very competitive, but that's not really it here. Okay. Like, if this were just a more experienced team defeating a less experienced team we wouldn't be here the reason we're here is that the sri lankan team is exceptionally bad they can't catch they can't throw they cannot score goals they don't seem to know the rules of the game very well same the match ends in a shutout says one german player after the game

they were so awful oh was it like a mercy rule where it's like germany has one has scored so many points that we're just gonna it's early but we're gonna call the no but the germans are very polite hosts the game is played with like a lot of sportsmanship in general it was you know i think they played through the game but apparently they had this like very uplifting talk with the sri lankans afterwards about how like this is like the beginnings of handball in germany like what you're just experiencing now is just the it's like the very beginning for you all so as as you learn it, you'll get better. Just like we did back in the day, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Let's have a pretzel and a beer. It'll, everything's okay.

Many pretzels, many beers. The Germans have really rolled out the red carpet for their guests and there's a million parties. There's sightseeing before and after the game. Everyone's getting along. There's drinking, dancing. Brotherships are being forged. You know, all that good stuff. And also the Germans sort of expected the loss because they've played this team before. The relationship was sparked when the Asian-German sports exchange program was contacted by the Sri Lankan sports ministry saying, Hey, we want to organize a friendly exhibition game. Cool. And so this association, AGSEP, the Asian German Sports Exchange Program, was formed

by this guy named Dietmar Doering. And it lasted from 1989 to 2004, this organization. Okay. Its goal is to connect specifically, I believe, the nations of Germany and Sri Lanka through sport. And the reason behind this, it's got one of those, this kind of very specific international mission has just the best possible origin story. This guy named Dietmar Doering is on vacation in Sri Lanka. He's a German guy. He's on vacation in Sri Lanka in 1981.

And he's this table guy he's on vacation in Sri Lanka in 1981 and he's this table tennis all-star like he's got all of these awards all of these victories da da da da and he's finally like oh I gotta get my mind off table tennis you know all this table tennis I'm doing gonna I need a vacation to Sri Lanka as you do yes as you do he gets in a cab and the cab driver's taking him somewhere and the cab driver's taking him somewhere and the cab driver's like yo do you mind if we stop at my place so i can change just on the way to where you're going and the guy's like oh yeah no problem whatever yeah i love it yeah he stops by this guy's place and the guy like invites him in like oh you know you can just wait in the living room thank

you for letting me do this whatever deep marjororing looks around and there's table tennis trophies everywhere oh and he's like the guy the guy comes out comes back from having change he's like holy shit man you know you're really good at i'm a table to like that's crazy that you're so good at table tennis yeah like those aren't mine those are my sisters and deep more drawings like i need to meet your sister and marry her and he never left sri lanka and because of this and his experiences connecting with this adopted culture that he now finds himself in that his this family he's married into he's like you know if you put a sri lankan person in a german person with table tennis between them it obliterates the barrier so why don't i be the guy who's going to build the bridge between germany and sri lanka through sport but you were talking about a game of handball but it's is it any sport yeah it's it's any sport okay it's any it's it's any sport. Okay. It's any opportunity for Germany and Sri Lanka to meet up for a game of something.

Oh, that's so sweet. So because of this organization, AGSEP, the Sri Lankan sports ministry gets in touch with them. They're able to set up a friendly, like, just kind of an exhibition game on the west side of Sri Lanka. The Germans go out, and it's the same story. The Bavarians kick the ever-loving shit out of the comically terrible Sri Lankans. Aww. That sounds fun now. Although in the Asian team's defense, that time they only lost 36-2.

Okay. Okay. Regardless, in the spirit of coming together in friendly competition, the Europeans invited the Sri Lankans to a tournament in Bavariaaria which is where they were just shut out yes oopsies but we're all still having a good time the bavarians as i said are really rolling out the red carpet for their athletically inept but friendly counterparts sightseeing celebrations drinking eating having a riot you know having cutting up yeah as they say yeah having a grand old time and and all the cutting up continues the next morning after the game so they're here for a 10 game tournament

and they've just completed the first game jesus 10 that's a lot of games to get your ass maybe they'll learn the rules as nine games go go on. That's true. So all this cutting up, you know, continues. The Sri Lankans have told the Germans, we're going out for a jog in the morning, just kind of as a team, and then we'll meet you for breakfast. Okay. Pretzels, I assume, for breakfast. Some pretzels and... Blood sausage. Just really like a black loaf of bread, yes. And the Germans are waiting for the Sri Lankans.

And they're waiting. And they're waiting. And eventually they're like, should we go check on the team at the hotel? So they go to the hotel, make sure everything's okay. And when they arrive, they find that the entire Sri Lankan national handball team, all 16 players and 8 trainers trainers have vanished into thin air. What? Like the hotel staff hasn't seen them? There's nothing in their rooms anymore? Were they ever even there? This is handball-ception. No, they were there.

It's not fair to say that they didn't leave behind anything. They left behind some dirty kits and a note effusively thanking the Germans for their hospitality and lavishly apologizing for their sudden disappearance and basically saying, we're really sorry, we went to France. Oh, shit. They're like, Bavaria's cool, but we want to hit pali is that kind of thing i've seen the eiffel tower in a postcard not quite obviously there's a lot of hubbub around where did this team vanish to especially when the news gets back to the sri lankan government who responds we don't have a national handball team Everybody says the Germans were like

So nice to the Sri Lankans They must have just been heartbroken before things So it's not really a game that's played so much in in sri lanka european handball it turns out so naturally the plot thickens hence how they suck at it so bad we get all these conspiracy theories uh fox news apparently accuses them of being a tamil terrorist pod out to infiltrate Germany. Thanks, Fox. But eventually, between the relevant authorities, we're all able to piece together what's happened.

Okay. A taxi driver comes forward saying that he and a few other cabs took the team to the Munich railway station. Okay. Then Dietmar Doering of the Asian-German sports exchange program, so this is, you know, him and his wife are table tennis royalty. He comes forward. Yeah.

And he says, Hey, we're just as confused as you are about what's going on, but one of the player's families has received word that he's now in Italy and will soon have a job. Uh, what? And then it becomes apparent that the so-called team have done what is known as decamping. They've used the competition to escape difficult lives in their home countries and seek new opportunities abroad, often sending money back to their families in Sri Lanka.

Oh my gosh. Decamping. Okay. This is apparently something of an epidemic among traveling sri lankan athletes according to chris thomas and vice quote during a 1993 sporting event in canada only one of the sri lankan team's 11 members came home in 2007 a triple jump coach taking part in international training event sponsored by the international olympic council disappeared in italy during the 2014 asian games in south korea two athletes a hockey player and a beach volleyball player went missing media reports suggest that the two players may have run away looking for jobs in the host

nation and even recently in october 2021 wrestling coach donald indrawansa decamped in oslo norway good spot and in this case it seemed that the players had decamped to join italy's sri lankan refugee community that is wild so at 5 a.m the morning after their match in with this lincoln the players all depart in groups of two and four in random directions so that if they're caught they don't have information to jeopardize one another right though one and all they're going to visit respective family members in italy who have promised them job lodging whatever right yeah who all is in the group mel magazine chatted with a couple of them one a 23 year old dude named rupa singh receives a phone call in 2002 from his cousin in Italy who arrived there illegally in a shipping container.

Very dangerous. Yeah, hot as fuck. Hot as fuck. Potentially, you know, you could suffocate. You could be, you could drown. You could be caught. Anything could happen, right? It's very dangerous.

So even though Rupesingh has dreams of following in his cousin's footsteps, he isn't willing to risk his literal life for it. But when he gets this call from his cousin, another path opens. The cousin says, hey, I know a way to get you to Italy, but you need to learn handball. Or quote unquote, learn it. Yes. Another dude, 22 year old Chandana, gets recruited by his brother. Nobody on the team has ever played handball although chandana's like i know volleyball like i played volleyball in high school yeah and they're like okay you know it's got it's a sport and it's got a ball it says ball and you're on

board we're going you're going let's go exactly so people are able to draw upon the various sports they do know to kinda arguably get the gist of it okay um as to who set the whole thing up fingers are pointed in many directions contemporary journalists as in at the time suggest it might involve deep marjoring of agsep which he strongly denies saying he was just as surprised as anyone and based on the quotes that he gives in the way that he tells the story i believe him okay okay he passes the taylor test judge taylor would find in his favor in the court he says he didn't have any suspicions of the false team except for once when they all showed up for a team photo in suits instead of uniforms well that's just being that's just being professional i like it for his part doring blames adula we genayaka the coach uh so sorry adula if you're

listening the coach of the fake handball team as for fox news and their allegations that these are tamil separatists off to germ Germany to wreak havoc for some reason. In addition to that making no damn sense, only three members of the 23-person group are even Tamil to begin with. Okay, yes. And that's like an ethnic minority in Sri Lanka, right? It's an ethnic minority in Sri Lanka that had a separatist movement around it. There would have been some sort of ceasefire signed right around the time that this story is happening so that's why it makes absolutely no sense yeah for sure and then also

like very obviously but worth saying not every person of a particular ethnicity is a terrorist just because they happen to you know exist anyway i've heard that too i've heard that too. I've heard that, yeah. Yes, it's new information and it's exciting and you should tell everyone you know. Don't accept no for an answer. Where's everyone now? Yes. The scandal spelled the end of AGSEP, unfortunately, who were blacklisted from competing in further events. Oh, Dietmar, I'm so sorry. Well, Dietmar's first instinct was, I'm gonna fucking sue every one of these people. Like, I'm so sorry. Well, Dietmar's first instinct was, I'm going to fucking sue every one of these people. Like, I'm just going to sue everybody involved in this. Okay.

Maybe take a breather. Yeah. Cooler heads prevailed. He realized that the players were doing what they needed to to survive. Amen. And most sent their families money every month. So he eventually calmed down. Oh.

He estimates that each of the men on the team supported an average of five to ten family members back in sri lanka among that number was rupa singh who worked at a pizzeria in italy for four years supporting his family before returning in 2008 oh wow as for chandana the promised job sadly never materialized and his homesickness made him return to sri lanka after six months he mailed mr doering a letter apologizing and it all seems to be water under the bridge oh my gosh really you sent him a letter yes everyone so for the record you can see the text too of this sorry we're going to france letter that they left to the germans and it's just like you guys were so sorry please don't take this personally you were so incredibly nice to us we

feel terrible that we're doing this terrible please accept our apologies please forgive us someday in time we're going to france so so sorry deep apologies comma the sri lanka handball team and then just a little drawing of a french flag yeah a baguette just us on the eiffel tower crying because we're sad that we hurt you it's beautiful as of 2014 more than half of the hinky handball players had returned to Sri Lanka. I don't know what became of the others, except that I hope wherever they are, they're generally safe and happy and well compensated. And that they've improved their handball skills a bit in case there's a 20 year reunion game in 2024. My sources were an article in DW called Sri Lankans pulled off disappearing act in Bavaria from 2004. And then I read an article by Chris Thomas in Vice magazine called an athlete went to Europe for a competition.

He disappeared like many before him. And an article by Andrew Fusey in Mel magazine. How did an entire Sri Lankan handball team vanish in Germany? Oh my gosh. Sri Lankan handball, forever. We are going to Venkshire on a summer holiday. We're going to climb on board a cute little ferry boat and we're going to island hop in Japan's Seto Inland Sea. Oh fun. The water is brilliant blue and the islands dotting the water are these gorgeous deep green and the sky is big and there's these lovely wispy clouds that we can watch as we take a very short ferry ride

15 minutes from the mainland to uh our first island our first and only we're only gonna say there so we're not island hopping. Well, I mean... We hopped onto an island, I suppose. Right? You certainly hop. That's good. That works. You'll hop on this one.

Yeah. You've got a very cute bucket hat. You have an adorable little backpack filled with all the cutest stationery in the world. Yeah. You have a nice little Tupperware filled with carrots and cabbage and you are just so ready for your adventuring day. We both are. I'm there too. I'm also wearing a bucket hat. Hi! I have dreams of a bucket hat. You finally showed up. Yes! I was gonna go island hopping but then I ran into you here. Why would I go anywhere else?

Exactly. Did you also bring a Tupperware full of cabbage? I did. I did, actually. Oh, good. Oh, good. I brought more than you, too, just so you know. I'm more prepared.

Yeah, you would. That's fair.'m i'm shocked i brought my tupperware to japan that's very unlike me you got it through customs it was amazing when i went to japan i did immediately buy a sushi jenga set that i carried everywhere for the entire trip it wasn't great planning it's a very cute jenga set you use chopsticks okay so you use chopsticks to pull out the little sushis and you also they they give you little wasabis they're little green slips of paper and they can have sometimes they have dares on them so if you pull out the jenga and you open up the sushi it has a wasabi dare inside but all the dares are very chaste they're like make a silly face wear a bucket hat

say yeah exactly say three things you like about yourself they're very sweet not like real wasabi real wasabi is not sweet just real stare into the void little green slips of yes so we play a game of jenga on board i'm sure sweet you win i love this story yay the fairy approaches the landing and as soon as we walk out onto the dock. We spy the cutest little bunny hopping along this path that leads from the dock. And we squeal. We are very excited. We follow this rabbit down the walking path. And this path encircles the entire island, which is not very big. It's a very small island. Like, I think to do this leisurely walk is like two hours, if that. Sure. So we follow this adorable little bunny, and we come to the one hotel that is on the island. are dotted in lounging, frolicking, sunbathing, the cutest little emotive bunny rabbits you have ever goddamn seen in your life.

Okay. We pull our backpacks off and we get our Tupperwares out, our through customs Tupperware. I'm glad we didn't eat all that cabbage on the boat ride. Oh, it makes me fart so bad. I mean, we'd be outside. It'd be okay. But. Okay, good.

Yes. We offer a piece of cabbage and a little carrot stick to a nearby bunny. And his little twitchy nose goes twitch twitch twitch and he's like he's cautious at first and then when he sees that everything's chill everything's cool this is an offering of cabbage offering of carrot he comes up takes little nibbles and then all his little friends come too and then some of them are like hopping up on your shins. Twinkle nose, twinkle nose, twinkle nose. They want more cabbage.

A few of them balance on their two hind legs. And they just nibble these little snacks and eventually you sit down and they get in your lap and they curl up in your little lap and you can pet them and love on them. and it's the cutest fluffiest mob of long-eared wonderfulness that you have ever experienced

taylor we have made it to okunoshima otherwise known as usagi Shima, Rabbit Island. That clocks, yeah. Yeah. This is a tiny speck of an island, 2.7 kilometers off the coast in Hiroshima Prefecture. That makes sense, having been to an island just near Hiroshima via the same little ferry. It's called Miyajajima and this one instead of being full of cute rabbits it's full of cute deers oh you went to the deer sanctuary i don't even know if it was a sanctuary because they were just out and about like they were just

roaming in the streets and maybe it's part of a sanctuary i don't know okay the island that i'm talking about miyajima is the home of the its kushima shrine which is a very it's got a very famous floating gate out in the water like a big orange gate that i saw your pictures of a backdrop of mountains and some waters yeah yeah i went to that and it's full of deer but japan has a lot of these islands that are just cats just bunnies just deer oops all bunnies you know it's very good it's a good gimmick eoshima is the island of cats and it's a it was a fishing village and now it has a ratio of 36 to 1 cats to humans that makes sense cats like fish duh yeah yeah well they were brought onto the island

to take care of the the rodents and then as the fishing industry declined as the human population of that island declined as well but the cats just kept going and going and going and now they're a source of tourism so no one's gonna fuck with them now yeah i remember there was a big conversation when we were traveling about like we want to see cute deer do we go to miyajima or do we go to nara which also has cute deer so it is cute animal tourism does exist folks all right it's on the record there's also a fox village in Miyagi Prefecture. And it's more like a sanctuary, but it's like you pay a small fee and you go into this multi-acre land area and there's all these adorable foxes. So let's go back to some cute ass bunnies.

Please. I'm a little scared of bunnies, by the way. Tell me. Why? a little scared of bunnies by the way tell me why um it's mainly the the white ones with the big red eyes which you went out of your way to talk about how decadently cute and fluffy and lying in repose these bunnies are so i i think that they're probably much cuter than those kind of bunnies yeah the dead eye bunnies but i don't know i guess i just kind of didn't grow up around them i didn't have a bunny or a friend with a bunny this story reminded me a lot of do you remember

that short story you wrote where actually there's two one was a play one was a story and one was about the woman who had all the butter the butterflies in her trunk of her car yeah and then the other one's the ladybug and the other is the ladybug infestation we're going in we're going to infestation of something real cute here aren't we well in this particular moment yes because i firmly believe they're like oh yeah soft little bunny that's so cute oh there's two of them oh there's okay now there's two oh there's 20 oh there's a thousand on this island that's a lot and they will overtake me and eat my eyeballs first you know it's like yeah at a certain point

do you live there or are you just renting from the bunnies oh you're totally renting from the bunnies nobody lives on the island they're just like what's up doc pay my rent exactly but i think there's something about like the multiplicity of even the cutest animals or even the most beautiful like butterflies, you know, and then you get like a whole thousands of butterflies and it's like, oh, they're insects. Like they've got like six creepy legs and stuff. I don't know. It fucks with me. No, I get it. I get it. A swarm of anything is still a swarm. It fucks with me. We'll just put it out there. No, I get it. I get it.

A swarm of anything is still a swarm. Okunoshima was, and still is, a very popular domestic tourism spot. Island grew in fame in 2011. Why? Because it was the year of the rabbit. And so there were many, many people who went to visit. That's a branding coup for them. Oh my gosh, yes.

And I failed to mention this, but when we bought our ferry tickets, the gift shop at the ferry terminal, the ferry itself, the landing, all of it's covered with cute, adorable bunnies, stickers, mirrors, yay! Rabbit ears everywhere. Absolutely.

Yeah. Japan does nothing better than making uh transit adorable I can think of many a sign that I saw that was like don't get drunk and beat up railway attendants but it was like a cute little YouTube.com where a Hong Kong tourist filmed herself with a bag of rabbit pellets walking down the little path on the island. And she was being followed by like a whole entire stream of rabbits. And it was very cute. She had, you you know an adorable bucket hat on how'd you do and everyone just loved it it was just like so we're cosplaying her

i mean the bucket hat is it's its own thing it's its own thing but yes we are so with the viral video that came out a lot more international tourists have started to arrive okunoshima shores and in part i mean the viral videos they can track that as kind of a starting point but then you can imagine with all the other technology that has occurred since 2014 instagram instagram and instagram yeah everybody loves to go there and take photos with the cute bunnies and be like, I'm covered in bunnies. I want to die like this. You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. I don't want to die like that. I just keep thinking like my eyeballs first. I've already decided how I want to go. I either want to fall into the gear work of a large clock while chasing a villain. Ooh. Or I want to get Batista bombed into a ring apron and just die. Wait, what is that?

Batista bombed? What's that? When Batista, when Batista, do you know Dave Batista? That he's a wrestler turned actor? Okay. I know why I don't know this now no I don't yeah his finishing move is the Bautista bomb which is like it's like a power bomb but he just fucking drives you into the mat I want him to do that to me on a ring apron which is the hardest part of the ring and then that's how I go thank. That makes more sense now. I get it. I'm on it. Back to your Rabbit Island story.

In 2005, the island had 136,000 visitors. That number ballooned to 254,000 17,000 of those were tourists from outside of Japan so that's just to numbers are hard I know but that's just to show that this place had started as a domestic tourism spot particularly for Japanese and now it's bloomed and blossomed and there's a lot a lot of different different nationalities that come through right although it's still very much there's a lot of domestic tourism there as well it's all blown up a bajillion times right yeah well and this is also like these numbers and speculations are also pre-covid so i'm sure that the domestic tourism uh is much higher the rabbits have just had their way with the island i'm sure since covid well we'll get into that don't let me take the early ferry here i'll wait for you okay thanks

thanks thanks so these rabbits, they estimate, and this was in about 2019. So pre-pandemic numbers, but the estimate then was that there were about 1000 rabbits on the Island and they were broken into 39 separate colonies. Okay. They're European rabbits. And they're, I guess our prototypical idea like the water ship down and Peter Rabbit kind of thing like they live in warrens they're highly social within these kin groups they mate like crazy so it seems and as we were just saying the the pandemic has probably lowered the visitation numbers but also the rabbits are very dependent on the tourists with their tupperwares full of cabbage and and carrots with the tupperware yeah so i don't

know what the numbers are now but i would assume they might be lower or you know domestic tourism has changed so much though too because you can't get out of your country to travel. So you travel within your country more. I don't know. It'll be interesting to get some new numbers there. Are you going to keep up with the Rabbit Island drama after this podcast is over? I'm Google alerted up, baby. I'm going to get everything.

I can't wait. Have the numbers gone up. Siri, have the numbers gone up Siri have the numbers gone up today check the receipts but how did these bunnies get here in the first place Taylor you might be asking that question great question yeah it is a great question I was in my head asking that question I thought European rabbits but this is Asia well let's take a look around the island a little bit more and see what else is there. Water. Water. Check. Trees. Check. Rocks. Check. We're going to follow the path, and it leads us closer to the hotel where there's a hot spring. Fun. Love it.

There's a restaurant connected to the hotel. It's actually the only restaurant on the island. Do they serve rabbit? I, oh, I hope not. Cheap and plentiful. Go outside. Go outside with a handful of cabbage. There's dinner.

I'm just saying. Somebody has thought of it. Someone certainly made the joke while on the island, looking deep into a rabbit's eye. Oh, certainly. Certainly. Looking at some little phone charm that they bought at the kiosk on the ferry, and it's got a little bunny, and you're like, you know what? I'm hungry. I'm pretty hungry.

Yep. So there's some tennis courts and a golf course and a little swimming beach that's past a few trees. It's really, it's really lovely. It's a very like low key spot. There's a cute little visitor center that is all like made out of wood and it has, you know, all the little cute bunny ear paraphernalia. And so we continue on this path. And like I said before, it goes around the entire island. It's leisurely two hours. You have to be careful, though, because there are many a rabbit that's running along the path. In fact, if you are in like a golf cart or even a bike, you need to go pretty slow because you might run over some rabbits.

And that'd be very sad. Yeah, I imagine the rabbits aren't very good about expeditiously clearing the way either. Yeah. It's not their, not their strong suit. Their strong suit is like hopping up on you and looking really cute and begging for food.

Yeah. Lounging. So we continue along this path and we kind of, uh, we clear an edge and there's an opening in the trees and we see that it's a very large structure that seems to be abandoned which is interesting almost kind of like warehouse size it's like whoa that's weird but it's like overgrown with trees and all the glass is gone and this must be where they make

the rabbits yeah exactly well it's covered in rabbits too so maybe that's like there's bunnies hopping everywhere that's so cute not bunnies hopping everywhere and it's so cute not that unusual given the circumstances exactly exactly and then we keep moving along the path and we see another large building and it's also abandoned but this one is painted in camouflage as if you're not supposed to see it but we're so close we, no. I thought it was just a nice rabbit island story. Yeah. And then there's another building. And we notice that, again, it's abandoned.

Josie, no. And it has these intense scorch marks all up the side. Oh, no. It's like, oh, shit. And then we continue along this path to yet another structure. They're all over the place. But this one has a sign, Taylor. I don't want it.

I don't care for it. Let's go back to the buddies. Taylor, let's read the sign. It's in Japanese, but it's also in English. No! And I read it out to you, and I say, hmm, remains of powder magazine. A total of 22 cannons were installed on the island in the Gyro Fortress period. This magazine is where ammunition and gunpowder of these batteries were kept.

Five guards were on duty in those days. Although the surrounding walls were made of brick, the roof was designed and built so that blasts, in the event of an explosion, would go through the roof. It was used as a depository of chemical arms when there was a poison gas factory on the island. I've never heard of a more ominous set of words than poison gas factory. And then a little bunny hops by. So cute. Oh, no. poison gas factory and then a little bunny hops by so cute oh no oh let me see yeah i should have known another building another abandoned one and this one has a sign as well and i read it to you as well it says remains of nagaru poison gas storehouse. Remains? The Imperial Japanese Army had been secretly manufacturing

poison gas on this island from 1929 until the end of World War II. The main products were blister agents. Which caused blistering. Were what? Blister agents. Which caused blistering

when contacted with skin. Ah. So, we continue. No, we don't. The podcast is over. Do-do-do. Do-do-do. What the fuck?

Okay. So, we get to kind of the end of this little path path and we're kind of coming back to the main landing area. And we see a very nice building, pretty small little brick building. And it is called the Poison Gas Museum. It is a two-room museum that displays all of the equipment, including the protective gear and none of the actual chemicals, of course, but like receptacles for the chemicals. It displays photographs. I hate you for doing this to me. I thought this was going to be a Bunny island story. And the entire museum... I'm livid.

...is devoted to the illegal production of poisonous gas that happened on the island that we are on. Okay. Okunoshima. Oh, wow. Okay, so... And somehow it ends in bunnies. Yep, yep.

So... Okay, cool. Let's talk a little bit. Yeah. So. Okay, cool. Let's talk a little bit about this poisonous gas. So. Yes, please. Not enough poisonous gas. Never enough. Never really enough.

During the years of 1927 to 1945, there were 1,632 people working on the island producing the poisonous gas. Primarily, we talked about those blistering agents it was primarily mustard gas so this was such a secret operation that during the second sino japanese war that led into world war ii the japanese government removed this island from any maps so bunny island was erased from oh wow as in many a great magic show the bunny disappeared oh you're good that's good i didn't think of that i'm quick damn thank you pull that one right out of the hat you certainly did um mustard gas when it comes in contact with any biological skin, in particular, any mucous membranes.

So that includes like mouth, nose, eyes. It causes the skin to blister and prolonged exposure can cause all types of illnesses, including cancer, as it causes specific damage to the dna of cells in particular in bone marrow so war crime shit yes what is specifically horrifying about mustard gas too is that it rarely kills you it is just a severe severe injury that is very hard to live with and it's like long-term fatally but it it will not, it's a not, it's not a quick and easy death when you're exposed to mustard gas. God, how upsetting.

It was first developed in World War I. When it's dry, when it's in a solid state, it actually has a, like a yellow color, like a brown, yellow color. So the name comes to it that way, but it also, there, there are types of it that kind of have a mustardy kind of sour I suppose smell but a lot of them are they don't have any smell tell me this isn't why your nails are mustard today no no I have a much more mustard color if you must know okay but if I mustard I do love the color mustard though me too it's one of my favorites so

it's just such like a solid earth but kooky crazy color i love it yeah yeah 70s bitch it's happening not in this context though i don't like no in this context it's a little different um it was developed to combat trench warfare which was emblematic of world war one yeah and because it was a heavy gaseous fog pretty much when it was dispensed it crawls on the ground so then it would like drop into the trenches and affect everybody along the front lines during World War I. Oh man. Yeah. It also was very dependent on winds and who was downwind and where it was being released upwind. And it caused a lot of issues in terms of infecting and causing damage to civilians in the towns or the cities that were just downwind of the front lines.

I cannot tell you how much this is the worst swerve you've ever pulled on me on the show. Oh, dude, I was such a fucking spoiled brat at the beginning. Because when you were doing Bunny Island, I was like, I kind of wish she'd done the Cat Island. Bunnies kind of scare me a bit. Now I'm in fucking mustard gas. I'm begging for bunnies. Bring back island bunnies kind of scare me a bit now i'm in fucking mustard gas i'm begging for bunnies bring back the bunnies actually i'm gonna bring the nazis because oh the development the opposite of chemical gas production after world war one it was prohibited to produce poison gas in germany according to the Treaty of Versailles. Yeah. World War II saw the Nazis develop and employ another type of chemical warfare using Zyklon-B, which is another horrible, fatal gas that was specifically used in concentration camps.

And if you haven't visited your city's Holocaust Museum, you should. It's a day. It's a hard day, but it's important. Yeah. And you should. Yeah, I think that it's really important to carve out time and space to go to something.

Like, honestly, I think something like going to an illegal poison gas museum specifically might be a bit intense for me personally, just based on the kind of stuff that gets under my skin. Yeah. But I support always going to somewhere to educate yourself. We were just talking about Hiroshima. They've got a nuclear war museum, Holocaust museums, anything to do with your country's

treatment of its indigenous folks. anything to do with your country's treatment of its indigenous folks like go learn use the feelings that you feel there to make you hopefully be a kinder person to those around you amen yeah so there's been all types of regulations and treaties around the use of poisonous gas and then specifically kind of chemical warfare there There was a treaty in 1922, so before World War II, where it was related to the use of submarines and noxious gases in warfare. It did not go through because France objected to some clauses relating to the submarine warfare. So we enter World War II with an understanding that chemical warfare is horrible. Besides the regulation on Germany, which

is obviously violated, there's nothing much in the way of prohibiting the use of poisonous gases. Of actual consequence. Yeah, yeah. Even still, it was generally looked down upon. And that is why the Japanese Imperial Army decided to erase this island from the maps and do their production of poisonous gases in more or less secret. You're saying it's looked down upon to illegally produce poisonous gases? Yes. Surprisingly. Yeah. Is that taboo now? It's a taboo now. It always changes. Okay.

It was a taboo in World War II as well. So. Yes. Something interesting slash horrifying about Japan's development of poisonous gas was that Japan deployed chemical warfare mainly in China. Apparently, President Roosevelt had warned that if chemical warfare, if poisonous gases were used against the U.S., then the U.S. would retaliate in kind against Japan.

As a result, Japan only uses their poisonous gas against China in the Sino-Japanese Wars, particularly the Second Sino-Japanese War. I don't know enough about anything to say, but I specifically don't know enough about this era of Sino-Japanese relations, the relations between China and Japan. What I do know is that these wars were really horrific and are still points of contention between China and Japan. There's been issues with Japan. Some officials and Japanese people denying some of the war atrocities that happened or revising some of the history to downplay some of the things. When I lived in China,

when I taught English in China, I remember there was one day, we didn't have the day off, but I was, we were in school and I was sitting in my office and I heard something like a air raid siren go off. And I turned to my desk mate and she was a Chinese citizen. And I said, what is that? Do we need to like do we need to go? Like what's happening? And she's like, I need to like do we need to go like what's happening and she's like I need to buckle up yeah yeah and she said oh no that is to commemorate the atrocities that happened during the Sino-Japanese

wars I mean she called it something else I think it's like in China it's the war of Japanese aggression or something like that right but this was 2014 and they're playing a loud siren at you so you don't forget that this happened. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

An interesting kind of, I don't know, cultural understanding of how contentious these wars were and still are between China and Japan. Yes. According to historians, the chemical weapons used during the Sino-Japanese Wars, which were, they were like right before the, they were a few of them, but the second one where chemical warfare was used was right before World War II. So we're talking like the 30s, the 20s, the 30s. Okay. So according to historians, the chemical weapons were authorized by specific orders given by Emperor Hirohito himself. There were 2,000 instances where chemical warfare was used against Chinese soldiers and civilians.

And by China's count, 80,000 people, people many of them civilians died from the gas um the poisonous gases that were all produced on our bunny island okunoshima oh wow okay interesting pretty intense regulations around chemical warfare of course have deepened and developed but also of course they've been violated and new weaponry has come on the scene and not to let the good old us of a off the hook one instance of chemical warfare that stands out in more modern history was in vietnam when the u.s military deployed agent orange i't realize it. It was kind of a loophole because Agent Orange was developed as essentially a weed killer. It was herbicide, I guess. Because the guerrilla warfare was all happening under the canopy of the jungle, if you got rid of all the trees, it'd be easier.

But of course, that herbicide is highly toxic to humans and has had prolonged issues with a lot of vietnamese and some u.s military members too so um what a what a world we live in what a what a world what a terrifying world. Yeah, war does suck. Don't do wars. It's really rough. We're pro-peace here. Very pro-peace. And pro-peace accessories. gosh, in the last 10 years that the Japanese government confirmed that they had left poisonous

gas containers, shells in China. They had buried them and just kind of like swept, swept them under the rug. So it's only in the last 10 years that they've acknowledged that they're still remain there and that they are responsible for the cleanup of the dumps. Jeez. Yeah. After the war, and by war, the war, I mean World War II, the Japanese army tried to hide its activities in Konoshima, but the Allied forces found the plant, and the Americans dumped about 5,000 tons of poison gas in the sea in 1946. The museum that we saw on our little

bunny tour, it was built in 1988 to memorialize anybody who had been exposed to the poisonous gas. There's a sign apparently by the little ticket machine inside the museum and it says, apparently by the little ticket machine inside the museum. And it says, war is meaningless and the production of poison gas is tragic. We make an appeal for everlasting peace. You can get behind that. Yeah, I can as well. It is seen in,

at least by the curator as kind of a, a twin museum to the museum in Hiroshima that's devoted to nuclear warfare. Which I've been to, and it was a profoundly moving experience. Tell me about it. It's a modern space. You go inside, and you kind of take a tour through... I mean, they've replicated the destroyed streets of Hiroshima. They have artifacts that were left behind by people who'd been killed.

There's a tricycle that a child left there. And I say left as though it was by choice. Right. You know, it was left behind when the child was killed by a nuclear bomb, right? Mm-hmm. So it's a really, really moving experience. And like, there's also a section where you can put on headphones and listen to folks who were affected by the bombs, talk about just like, what that experience was like, how it's affected

them throughout the rest of their lives. What happened to their families, how did they survive, you know, all of these things. It's really, really moving. Oh, wow. Does it almost kind of feel like a Holocaust museum, maybe? I guess maybe that would be my point of reference for it. I would say that it gave me a similar feeling in different ways as it did when I visited Anne Frank house in the Netherlands okay the Anne Frank thing was a bit different because I'm legitimately a massive

Anne Frank fan I love Anne Frank's diary I've read it a million times I think I'm really susceptible to teen girls writing in their diaries as a genre but fair enough yeah that's just you know what I mean really intelligent creative teen girls writing in their diary you can't beat it but I also felt this huge weight of just like the historical consequence of what I was looking at and like you can't be there and be a feeling person and not contemplate, you know, the darker side of humanity and the futility of hatred for the other and these kinds of things, I think. Yeah, no, totally. And I think, I mean, this Poison Gas Museum is very small. It's only two rooms and it's displaying equipment and it has a lot of photographs and a lot of information.

And it has this understanding of the situation, not as in laying blame or trying to trying to, I don't know, inspire guilt. But it's really just this like examination, I think too I think we need to look with clear eyes and quite starkly at the atrocities of the past if we hope to learn from them and I you know as much as my reaction as I imagine will be the reaction of many was go back to the bunnies please yes I also don't think that it does us no good to, you know, as once literally happened, figuratively erase this island off the map and just be like, oh, it's just the bunny island. It's just a cute island full of bunnies where you can go in your bucket hat with your Tupperware full of cabbage. pay respect when you're there to the fact that this island has a larger, less Instagram-friendly history. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's a good way to say it, certainly. So the curator of the museum in 1995, and at that time, he was a guy named Hatsuchi Murakami, and he worked at the poison gas factory as a teenager. So he's the curator, and he's understanding the museum and its relation to the museum in

Hiroshima. And he's quoted as saying, both poison gas manufacturing and the atomic bombing happened in Hiroshima Prefecture during the war. My hope is that people will see the museum in Hiroshima City and also this one. So they will learn that we were both victims and the we there he's referring to is Japanese. Yeah. We Japanese were both victims and aggressors in the war. I hope people will realize both facets and recognize the importance of peace. We all hold this duality,

where we're capable of both receiving and committing great atrocities. It's complex. It certainly is. And I feel like even, actually even sharing this, it feels a little strange to me as an American who, you know, my country is responsible for developing, creating and deploying nuclear, you know, the Hiroshima, the bomb of Hiroshima, you know, and so I feel kind of like, or it's hard for me to, to find a thread through the complexity, because it's just like how how is a as a citizen of a country of a nation how do you understand your history and just exactly what you said like you can be an aggressor and a victim all in the same stroke for sure and it it comes into questions of of patriotism right and like many people i I'm sure even listening to this would be like,

yes, I love my country. My country has been good to me and I feel I have opportunities here or I came from another country and I feel that I have opportunities in this one. Obviously, this isn't a universal thing. Others would disagree. But at the same time, you you know every country has a history and very few have clean hands right yes yes because any any government any country is just comprised of the people who are running it and living in it at any given moment. Yeah.

Yeah. And we are flawed as people, as humans. Deeply, deeply flawed. On the one hand, you can have your cute bunnies. And on the other hand, you have your, you know, derelict poison gas factories. Just cute little bunnies hopping through the abandoned poison gas. That's fucked.

That's apocalyptic or something. I hate it. That's fucked. That's apocalyptic or something. I hate it. No, totally. So when the Americans came through after World War II, they dumped the poisonous gas that was being stored there, but they also decommissioned the site, which means they were responsible for some of that camouflage paint. They wanted to kind of... Okay.

I mean, the U..s also stored ammunition there during the korean war we're talking about complexities of aggressors and victims so the site was completely decommissioned of the poisonous gas but it was not decontaminated Not decontaminated. Oh. What I mean by that is that on our trip, Taylor, we need to make sure that we buy bottled water. We're not going to drink anything on the island. And we're going to bring an extra bottle of water so that we can fill the plastic and metal bowls that are all around the island to water the rabbits.

Because they can't be drinking from the island either. So wait, the rabbits are not self-sustaining? They're entirely sustained by tourists? If the tourists were to someday... Uh-oh. Yeah. Ruh-roh-raggy. That's tough. Let's go back to the rabbits.

Please. We need a little break, no? It's about goddamn time. Been begging for these rabbits for a while. We'll see. Maybe you want to go back to the rabbits please we need a little break no it's about goddamn time i've been begging for these rabbits for a while we'll see maybe you want to go back to the poison gas i don't know i don't know the rabbit population you are correct taylor is entirely dependent on humans and not only humans but the worst kind of humans, tourists. Oh, no. And when we think about the biology of rabbits, like we know them as cute pets now, but it's only in about the last 150 years that they've been domesticated as pets.

Before that, they were kept for, yeah, they weren't seen really as pets. Not like a dog or even a cat. They were kept around for food and for their furs. Right. That's the Taylor Basso restaurant, the Let's Eat a Rabbit restaurant. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Or they were used for hunting. You know, the dogs would run after whatever. I don't know. Got you. Naturally, they're pretty skittish animals, which I don't know if you've ever met a bunny, that seems to check out. I have.

Yeah. Yeah, they're a little doody. They'll twitch their nose at you for a while, and they'll hop away. Yeah, that's bunny style. The bunnies on Okunoshima are very different than that. They're cautious, of course, but once they see that you have food, they are your best friend. They are in your lap. They're cuddle zone 24-7.

That's how the deer were in Miyajima, so I believe it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Same thing. Like, oh, hey, is that a cheese string? Yeah. You want to share? Interesting.

I have an interesting story about cheese string. Yeah. Look at my eyes. They're big. Look how cheesestring, yeah. Look at my eyes. They're big. Look how cute I am. Cheesestring, yeah. Domestic rabbits can live up to about 10 years. Wild rabbits live a little less than that, probably like between five and seven.

The Okunoshima rabbits live on average two years oh population skews extremely young and many of the rabbits are babies or they are pregnant which means that the mortality and the morbidity rates are very high so the rabbit turnover is up there it's's a churn. So can I ask you a question that I never thought I'd have to ask you on this podcast, but we're, we're, you know, we're traveling. We're different people. Uh, when do rabbits reach sexual maturity? That's a very good question. They do it extremely young. Got you. I think they only need to be, that's why they can reproduce so quickly. Yeah. Breed like rabbits. I think they only need to be, that's why they can reproduce so quickly. Yeah. Breed like rabbits. I think it's at four months they reach sexual maturity. Jesus. Too young. Too

young. Haven't even seen the world yet. They haven't been island hopping yet. God damn it. Why are you so fucking fat? They haven't even sowed their wild oats yet. Yeah. Fucking cabbage out of a tupperware. You think I'm ready for a family. They're animals that have something called induced ovulation, which means that the females don't have to be in a certain cycle. They could just be close to a male and they're like, yeah, I'm ready to bone. And boom, they're ovulating. So the likelihood of them getting pregnant is really high and they can get pregnant on the same day that they gave birth. There's no refractory period.

It sounds... What a life. Incredibly painful to me. I would hate to be a rabbit. It would suck balls. Well, if it makes you feel any better, you just got to hang in there for two years. Yeah. Our rabbits on Rabbit Island aren't doing so hot they only live about two years and it's

interesting that it's only two years because there are no predators on the island there is nothing there that could eat them the only thing that could attack or cause them harm would be humans but the humans who are arriving at okunoshima are like bring on these rabbits i want to drown in their cuteness so there's no there's i mean maybe a golf cart every once in a while might knock one out the water is contaminated there at what what of the land and the like is that perhaps affecting their mortality rates? That very well potentially could. There hasn't been extensive studies on why the lifespan is so low. It could be definitely some of the poisonous gas that's there. agents that were developed on the island don't really have like a shelf life in the same way

that we would understand nuclear a nuclear reactor even though the island wasn't formally decontaminated the likelihood of there still being poison like fatal poison is pretty low hence why tourism can happen there right that. That's, yeah, fair point. Fair point. So what we might be looking at then is just like shitty, complacent rabbits. Well. Not meaningfully challenged. No predators.

Don't collect their own food. You know, that can't, what's their fitness? They hop around a trail sometimes? Yeah. They're just their goo. They're goo Yeah. They're just, they're goo. They're goo rabbits. They're just, they live in this Xanadu where all they do is fucking get fed

and then they die young because they're not tough. There was like a cute little like rabbits on Okunoshima, like little YouTube video. And I read through the comments and one of the comments said like, I went to this island and these rabbits were fucking lazy as shit they would just lie in the sun and whimper whenever they wanted food

this commenter was very disillusioned about it the rabbits were too hedonistic yes yes but they have also found that it might be linked to their diet because there's nothing on the island that the rabbits can really eat. What they're eating is carrots, cabbage and rabbit pellets. And I'm sure the occasional Dorito that some idiot gives them. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Gummy bear, popcorn, other things rabbits shouldn't eat. Exactly. And rabbits have to eat, they're herbivores, right? So they have to eat kind of constantly in order to get all the calories and nutrients they need. But the visitors who

are coming to the island don't come constantly. They come mainly on a Saturday in the summer. If it's a rainy Tuesday, dim rabbits are going to be hungry. They're finding that a lot of the rabbits who come up dead have gastrointestinal issues due to the infrequent and poor diet. And it might be some of the water too, certainly. Right. There were some researchers who went to the island to study the rabbits. She's more of kind of like an anthropologist. Margot de Mello is her name. She and her research team reported the majority of the rabbits lived near the hotel.

Because that's where all the people were. And about 26% of the rabbits that they saw that they could study were visibly injured or had illnesses where did these fucking rabbits come from dude this is a mystery what there's one theory what wait what yes they don't know where all these fucking European rabbits came from. What a twist. Okay. There is one theory that the Japanese Imperial Army, when they were developing their poisonous gases, brought rabbits as test subjects. So they let them loose on the island. them loose on the island and if they turned up dead or like with like a third ear or something they knew that you know they had to evacuate the island you know the canary in a coal mine kind of situation somebody would have attested to that no although i guess it's just recently that japan has

even acknowledged that these things existed well and according to records when the allied forces came in the u.s soldiers were instructed to euthanize every single rabbit that they saw to essentially eradicate. When the Americans arrived, there were already bunnies then, so it wasn't the Americans. Correct. The Americans didn't bring bunnies. No. Interesting. Okay. Sorry. I, my first thought was, well, it was the Americans. I'm sorry to have done that No, fair enough, fair enough The other theory is that in the early 1970s They were bringing, and they still do They bring school trips out to look at the abandoned buildings In the 88, when the museum was made to bring school children there

But there's a theory that in the early 70s A school group brought out five rabbits and those rabbits created this population they brought out five rabbits and just left them there and just were like bunnies yay i i don't or they ran away they got out of the rabbit hutch i guess to me it seems more likely that the test rabbits got free or that like they weren't able to euthanize all of them or some poor soldier was like i have killed enough in my life i'm not gonna kill this motherfucking rabbit this poor little adorable cute thing i'm just gonna let it go free into the woods and say i didn't. I don't know. That's entirely my own speculation. But I like

your belief in people there. It's a very like, we've just heard about people dumping poison gas, just dumping it somewhere. So what's a couple rabbits? You know, it could be anything. No, exactly. If we're worried about the ecological ramifications, it's like, oh, you mean those 6,000 pounds I dumped it out in the middle of the pacific yeah that's a good point and what's interesting is that okunoshima is within a national park there's like a few of these islands that all create a national park and according to the government environmental agency who has jurisdiction over these national parks according to this government agency's rules alien species who are not native to japan are subject to

eradication they would need to be taken offline according to this wildlife protection law of japan but there's this there's this weird feedback loop where the environmental agency the government agency says well we're not really in charge of the rabbits the hotel on the island is in charge of tending to and maintaining these rabbits so we'll let them take care of it. But then any researchers or journalists who ask the rabbits, like, well, what are the environmental ramifications? Everybody at the hotel just says, well, you'll need to speak to the Japanese Environmental Agency. And it's just like back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And also it must be one of those like if it ain't broke situations.

What's the fallout here if the rabbits stay alive? They die young and 26% of them are a little banged up. Yeah. Like, versus now we need to exterminate a rabbit colony that has been here before, unexterminatable since the Second World War. True. I mean, there are accounts from hotel workers that say on average it's about 15 dead rabbits that they find and have to dispose of

so the tourists don't see them every day a daily 15 yeah okay hold on yeah it's a lot are you doing some math 5,475 dead rabbits a year, unless it's a leap year. And then that would make it 5,490. Let's round up. Let's say 6,000. That's a lot. That's not how you round up 5,490. Well, you know, you round to the 50. Let's just round it up to fucking 10,000 rabbits. That's a lot of dead rabbits, folks. I think it's a million rabbits. No, no, it's true. You make a really good point because there's also this idea that, like, the island is also home to this very intense and sad history that needs to be examined and looked at. And if, you know, if the bunnies get people in the door,

then the bunnies get them in the door. Let's keep the bunnies around, you know? Come for the bunnies, stay for the mustard gas. As they say, yeah. That old showbiz trope. I'll say this as my last little shaboo, but there's a website that is Hiroshima Tourism Guide. And according to a city official,

a Hiroshima city official, and this is a direct quote, in the past, many people lost their lives in Okunoshima due to the production of gas poison. We would like you to know that many people are still suffering today. And at the same time, we would like you to learn the importance and appreciation of the peace we have today while you can enjoy interacting with rabbits. Come visit Okunoshima Island. That's very, that's a really interesting story. And it's a very complicated history this little island has.

Well, and I, you know, we only started its history in the 20th century. I'm sure there might be a lot more to say about the native peoples who lived there or in post-COVID too. Like what is happening to the rabbit population now? I did check out the Instagrams because there are plenty of them from rabbit island and it seems like uh the photos are still coming the rabbits are still cute we just don't know quite the numbers so nothing nothing you know scale changing has happened you need to wait for those new numbers i'll let you know when my Google alerts lets me know. Let me know when that pager buzzes. I'm sorry, I have to go. I'm sorry, Mr. President.

You'll have to take my creme brulee home for the first lady for Dr. Jill Biden. I have to go to Rabbit Island. Let me crack the top first. I don't want Jill to have have that that's for me yeah my dude oh wow welcome to your wonderful little summer fairy riding island hopping bunny loving poisonous gas production summer vacay okay such a cliche Bunny loving poisonous gas production summer vacay. Such a cliche. If you've seen one of those movies, you've seen them all, hey? Exactly.

Thanks for tuning in. If you want more Infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you like the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode were an article from www.smithsonianmag.com called The Dark History of Japan's Rabbit Island by Andrew Amelinks, published March 23, 2017. A paper written by the researcher Margot de Mello called The Rabbits of Okunoshima,

How Feral Rabbits Alter Space, Create Relationships, and Communicate with People and Each Other, published January 2019. I looked at the article, The Island Erased from the Map, Okunoshima, from Hiroshima for Global Peace website. I also looked at the Hiroshima Tourism Guide, Okunoshima Poison Gas Museum. I read an article,

This Island is Overrun with Rabbits, Here's Why It's a Problem, by Okunoshima Island in Hiroshima, Japan, by Rei Usi, Xingyu Wei, and Carolyn Funk, published 2018. I read an article in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof called Okunoshima Journal, a Museum to Remind Japanese of Their Own Guilt, published August 12, 1995. I looked at facts about sulfur mustard on the CDC website. And lastly, I found the language on the tourism signs that were in front of the abandoned buildings, I found those posted on a YouTube channel hosted by Shingle Parada. The interstitial music you heard earlier was by Mitchell Collins, and the song you are listening to now is T Street by Brian Steele. Thank you.