Hachinohe Port Coastal Industrial Zone about 60 years ago and today

History of Hachinohe Port Coastal Industrial Zone

The dense rows of houses of Hachinohe break off suddenly as they approach the sea. A wide waterway and the sea appear beyond them. Hachinohe Port is a port opened on that water's edge, spreading out centered on the area where two rivers, the Mabechi River and the Niida River, come out to the sea. The range shown is that river mouth and the waterfront surface continuing on its north side. The nearest railway station is Hon-Hachinohe Station on the Hachinohe Line, but the station is outside the view, in the urban area to the southwest. Two past photographs remain, and viewed in succession with today's one, they show how a surface whose upper half was entirely sea changed into a surface lined with piers and tanks.

A sand beach opening at the river mouth

On this surface jutting out north of the river mouth, the ground height stays at around 1 m. The central measuring point is 0.9 m, and only to the south, up the waterway, does it finally reach 1 m. Toward the west it rises to 2.4 m, but the north and east entries are blank. That is because there is no ground in those directions. It is not land that can compete with the sea in height.

Originally it is a surface made by the work of rivers. Sand carried from upstream is pushed back by the waves outside the river mouth, forming a long beach northward along the water's edge. The bright arc in the 1961-69 photograph is that action taken shape just as it is. A surface of sand left by the river is the base of this view.

A sand beach is not suited to ships. The water is not deep enough, the waves of the open sea come straight in, and sediment keeps coming out of the river. Even so, that a flat surface continues widely is a strength as a site. Stop the waves, dredge the depth, and add the missing surface on the sea side. The traces of these three measures piled on top of each other appear divided between the two past eras.

A sand beach and a thin jetty

The 1961-69 photograph is coarse-grained black and white, and the upper half of the frame is sea lined with streaks of waves. The upper right is outside the range of the photograph and is blanked out in white. The boundary between land and sea differs in character on either side of the river mouth. On the left, straight-cut seawalls and long, narrow bright surfaces line up, and inside them rows of buildings and several round tanks can be seen. On the right, a bright surface of sand with blurred boundaries spreads widely, and the water's edge continues southeast in a gentle arc.

The river mouth itself is narrow. A thin river from the south joins the wide waterway coming in from the left, and they go around a sandbank to come out to the sea. Long, narrow buildings cling to the banks, and small boats line up on the water. To the northeast of the river mouth, a single thin line juts out offshore. It is a jetty that ends with its tip tapering, and there is only one breakwater in the view.

The lower half of the frame is urban area, with dense rows of houses filling both banks of the river. In the lower left there is a corner where buildings with large roofs and round tanks gather, and even at this point factories have come up to the water's edge. However, the sea beyond is not yet enclosed by anything.

A surface filled by tanks

If you switch to the 1974-78 photograph, the surface of sand that drew an arc cannot be found. Instead, a bright surface with straight-cut edges spreads north of the river mouth, and round tanks form rows on it. Dozens of them, large and small mixed, line up regularly among the white pavement. Toward the west sits a large building with a blackish roof, the southern edge of the surface has been reinforced with seawalls, and the bank of the waterway has become a straight line.

The change offshore is greater. Works reaching arms out to sea to stop the waves have progressed, and white breakwaters extend in the sea, turning corners many times. One runs long down to the southeast from the northern end of the surface, and another changes direction offshore to the east. The gap where the breakwaters break off becomes the entrance for ships. Thick, long breakwaters have been placed in a different position from the thin jetty of 1961-69.

On the southeastern water's edge, quays have lined up at even intervals. Many square piers jut out into the water, with long, narrow ships moored alongside between them. A thin line crossing the waterway has also come in, linking the two banks. In the upper left of the frame there is a surface where bright arc-shaped stripes overlap in many layers, readable as traces of earth or sand piled up and moved little by little, but you cannot tell what was piled. In one corner of the upper right, the range with no photograph remains as it was.

Lines remaining at the water's edge

In today's photograph, man-made shapes have come to outnumber the rest on the sea side. From the center toward the open sea, a large pier juts out bending in an L shape, and a separate surface carrying two large round white tanks floats to its northeast. A long landing pier extends offshore, with ships moored alongside. The water surfaces left between the piers are even in width, and their edges are straight everywhere. The width of the waterways is designed.

The land side has also been replaced. The cylindrical tanks have widened the range where they line up, filling the surface toward the river mouth with white circles. In the northwest there is a wide blackish-brown surface and a long dark building, and although the arrangement shows that it is a place where something is piled up in bulk, you cannot tell what goods they are. Buildings with square roofs have come into the empty lots, and the roads bend along the shape of the surface. A single bridge crossing the waterway from the urban side attaches from the south. In the northwest corner of the view, water not enclosed by seawalls and a brown flat surface remain.

Values are also worth mentioning. The reference point is not on the piers but at a residential site in Shinminato 1-chome across the waterway, about 650 m from this location. The price as a residential site is 49,000 yen per square meter in 1994 and 28,000 yen in the 2026 publication. Partway through, 54,400 yen was set in 1999, making a sequence that rises and then falls. It is read not as the value of the surface where people work, but as the value of the place next to it where people live.

The figure of a ground height of around 1 m says nothing by itself. For how far water is assumed to reach in a tsunami or storm surge, the proper source is the map published by the City of Hachinohe. In the photograph of every era, this remains a surface facing the open sea.

The water's edge that drew an arc in 1961-69 has, in today's photograph, gone inside the piers and been replaced by straight quays. Even so, there is one thing that does not move in the three photographs. It is the direction in which the waterway entering from the left receives the river from the south and comes out to the sea. Only the direction of the river mouth does not change. The shape of the surface was redrawn in a big way twice, but the outlet of the river remained in its original place.