The island is home to over 1,000 wild rabbits, who have plenty of fields and forests to explore. But did you know the island has a rather dark past, a past so dark, the whole cuddly feeling you get when thinking about rabbits, will disappear. The whole story begins at how these rabbits ended up on the island.

According to ripleys, the first rumor ties back to WWII when Okunoshima was previously used as a chemical munitions plant to manufacture tear and mustard gas. Despite the Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical weapons in 1925, a loophole existed where these vile weapons could still be created and stored away. The rabbits were unfortunate test subjects for these experiments, brought to the island to determine the effectiveness of the weapons. The remaining rabbits got released by the workers following WWII’s end, left to survive in the wild.

However, Ellis Krauss, a Japanese politics professor at the University of California San Diego, disputed this rumor. In an interview with Krauss, he revealed that the Americans who liberated the island euthanized all the rabbits used for experiments.

So if those rabbits were gone, how did all of those bunnies end up on the island? Another rumor points to the antics of school children, who set free eight rabbits onto the island during a field trip. With no predators or hunters to disrupt them, the rabbits multiplied into the large population the island is known for today.

Not only can you visit the rabbits, but you can also make an entire vacation out of it! Visitors can either take a boat in from the mainland for a day visit or stay at the National Park Resort Hotel, a vacation spot on the island. Visitor scan interact with rabbits, bike around the island, sit in simmering hot springs, and even visit the chemical plants used during WWII, now converted into the Okunoshima Poison Gas Museum. It sounds like the perfect location for any couple’s bunny moon.

At a glance, Rabbit Island seems like a paradise with a dark and historic past, but it also has a very present threat: the tourists themselves.

Due to the island not having enough vegetation to support its large population, rabbits rely on the tourists to feed them, resulting in inconsistent feeding times and bad diets. Rabbits are overfed on crowded tourism days and barely eat on bad weather days with little foot traffic.

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Typically, a wild rabbit’s diet consists of leaves, plants, and seeds. However, tourists often bring carrots and cabbage to feed their new long-eared friends. Cabbage is deficient for rabbits since they have difficulty digesting it, and the food is too low in fiber for their dietary needs.

Food isn’t the only issue for the rabbits. Due to toxins from Japan’s experiments during WWII, the island’s groundwater got contaminated. This is why the island asks tourists to refill water buckets for the rabbits. All these factors culminate in a high turnover rate for the rabbits, only having a two-year lifespan. Read more on this article here.