The highest peaks Hahajima are Chibusayama (lit. Breast Mountain), approximately 462 metres (1,516 ft), and Sakaigatake, 443 metres (1,453 ft). It is part of an archipelago that includes Chichijima approximately 50 km (31 mi) to the north and the nearby smaller islands such as Anejima and Imōtojima and Mukōjima. The group forms the Hahajima Rettō (母島列島; formerly the "Baily Group").
History
View of the southern tip of Hahajima, the Minamizaki peninsulaOki village, Mukōjima in the distance
Micronesian tools and carvings suggest prehistoric visits or settlement but the island was long uninhabited before its rediscovery, sometimes—but probably mistakenly[2]—credited to Bernardo de la Torre during his failed 1543 attempt to find a northern route back to Mexico from the Philippines. Captain James Coffin, of the whalerTransit originally named the largest island in the group "Fisher Island", which became Hahajima, and the second largest "Kidd Island", after the owners of his vessel. The islands came to be known as the "Coffin Islands". (Hahajima was also called Hillsborough Island.) Hahajima was settled by Europeans before becoming part of Japan.
During the Pacific War, the Japanese government removed the local civilian population and fortified the island. It was attacked several times by the US bombers. First on December 4, 1944 when Navy search planes of Fleet Air Wing One joined with Seventh Air Force bombers to attack installations on the island as well as Iwo Jima. Four days later there was another attack by Fleet Air Wing One. Then on December 10, B-25 Mitchells from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing struck at shipping moored at Hahajima.[3] The remains of defensive fortifications are now one of the island's tourist attractions.
The population, which was 1,546 in 1904 and 1,905 in 1940, is now only 450. A single road connects the abandoned village of Kitamura (北村) at the north end of the island to the village of Okimura (沖村) - formerly "Newport", at the southern end of the island, where the harbor is located. The island can be reached by ferry in about two hours from Chichijima. The economy of Hahajima is based on commercial fishing, tourism as well as a state-run rum distillery.
Education
Haha-jima Elementary School and Junior High School (小笠原村立母島小中学校)
But most if not all of the endemic land snail species seem to persist on the remote Higashizaki peninsula on the eastern coast. This is a quite pristine expanse of ground, scenic but very hard to reach (one has to climb Mt. Chibusa before descending to the peninsula). It consists of sheer seacliffs surrounding a plateau with Chinese fan palm (Livistona chinensis), pandanus and broadleaf (e.g. Persea kobu, a wild avocado) forest, and appears to be untouched by invasive species at present. It has been proposed that access to the area should be monitored, so that visitors will not inadvertently contribute to destroying this unique area.[5]
Snails
All of these snails are endemic at least to the Bonin Islands.
Among birds, the Bonin white-eye (Apalopteron familiare), a gaudy-colored passerine, seems to occur nowhere else anymore than on Hahajima.[6] The extinct Bonin grosbeak (Chaunoproctus ferreorostris) is sometimes said to have occurred in the Hahajima Group (though not on Haha-jima itself), but this seems not to be true. Columba janthina nitens, the Bonin subspecies of the Japanese wood-pigeon, used to occur on Haha-jima. While it is not precisely known when it vanished from this island,[7] the taxon apparently became completely extinct during the 1980s, but was rediscovered in 1998. The island has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International.[8]
Chiba, Satoshi; Davison, Angus & Mori, Hideaki (2007): Endemic Land Snail Fauna (Mollusca) on a Remote Peninsula in the Ogasawara Archipelago, Northwestern Pacific. Pacific Science61(2): 257–265. DOI: 10.2984/1534-6188(2007)61[257:ELSFMO]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract
