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On the southern tip of Hakodate, amongst one of the cities largest cemeteries, can be found a small pink house that now acts as a tea shop. The owners are clearly proud of their buildings heritage and have done well to maintain its rustic appearance. But the site also holds a darker secret from the war years. One that isn’t mentioned on the tourist sign out front.
In 1885, the rapidly growing port city decided that it needed a way to control the spread of infectious diseases coming in from outside vessels. The establishment of the quarantine station (renamed as such in 1896) was their answer to the problem. For many decades to come it maintained this function.
Courtesy of British POW Jim Crinion, via Mansell POW Research Centre
Things would change during the Second World War. A decision by the Japanese military had been made to establish camps for Prisoner’s of War in Hokkaido Prefecture. To this end, on the 1st of December 1942, a temporary camp was established in Hakodate whilst the main camp was constructed. As part of the building process, the quarantine station buildings were absorbed into the new camp. On the 26th of December 1942, the site known as the Hakodate Main Camp was officially opened. In total 396 prisoners were interned here. 283 British, 53 Dutch, 50 Americans, 8 Australians, a Canadian and an Estonian. Of this total, 114 of the prisoners died before the war was over. The main function of the camp was to provide manual Labor for the local shipyards where inmates worked under brutal conditions, often in the bitter cold.
In 1945, Allied aircraft began the occasional bombing of the city. Concerned that the camp might be damaged, leading to the escape of POWs, the Japanese moved the remaining inmates to a new camp North of Sapporo at the town of Bibai in June 1945. Following the war, all camps were liberated and closed. The quarantine station reverted to its original purpose which proved handy as an increase of refugees began flooding into Hokkaido from Sakhalin, now Russian territory. In 1968, the station was relocated and many of the sites structures demolished. Today, the Tea shop is all that remains of its long and forgotten past.
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