Hatoma

Hatoma (Japanese鸠 间 岛, -jima ) is a Japanese island. It is the smallest of the Yaeyama Island group and barely measures a kilometer in diameter. Administratively it belongs to the municipality of Taketomi in Okinawa Prefecture. In the local dialect of the island Patuma name is pronounced.

Geography

Hatoma is located about four kilometers north of Iriomote Island. It is a small island, which has an area of 0.96 square kilometers and a circumference of 3.8 km. 31 March 2011, 41 people were living in 30 households on it.

History

Hatoma is several centuries continuously inhabited, if not longer. Earthworks on the island have shown that the population until recently mainly of crabs, which were collected in the coastal waters, and have fed vegetables.

In contrast to the nearby island Irimote there was no malaria on Hatoma, bringing the long-ago -reaching settlement can be explained.

In the early 19th century there was a heyday as a fishing port and processing center for tuna fishing. At that time, there was a population of several hundred people.

In 1968 it was closed for processing of the tuna because of the decreasing fishing the plants. A decrease in the population, however, had already begun in front of it. With the demise of the only industry on the island began a rapid population decline.

Its secluded position arrived late modern infrastructure after Hatoma. So it was only from the 1960s electricity.