Onahama Port about 60 years ago and today

History of Onahama Port

The place name Onahama points directly to a beach. In the southeast of Fukushima Prefecture there is a sandy coast drawing a gentle arc toward the Pacific Ocean, and the port at this location was built on the inner side of that arc. The nearest station is Izumi Station on the Joban Line, which lies outside the frame. The flat land along the shore is narrow, and just a little inland from the sea the rows of houses quickly become dense. Even so, the port was placed here for a reason in the land behind it. In the hills inland there were mountains where coal was dug, and a shore somewhere was needed to transfer what was dug out onto ships. The inner side of the arc takes the waves of the open sea, but if breakwaters are laid across the water offshore near the shore, a calm water surface can be made. If you switch through the aerial photographs from the oldest, you can see those breakwaters and piers extending toward the sea one after another. It is a location where the changes on the sea side are larger than those on the land side.

A sandy beach and a single pier

In the 1961-69 aerial photograph, the lower half of the frame is still all sea. The shore draws a gentle arc, and at the water's edge many white lines of breaking waves line up parallel to the shore. The sandy beach continues from the left corner past the center, and almost no structures are placed on it. A port-like shape appears only toward the right of the frame, where a white surface reclaimed in a square juts out into the sea, with several long, narrow hulls lying alongside its edge. This is the only pier, and the breakwaters enclosing the water are just two thin lines that bend offshore and extend. The sea side was still empty. Just inside the shore there are buildings with long, narrow roofs and structures lined up in a straight line, and several white round tanks can also be seen. There is hardly any space between the band of buildings on the shore and the rows of houses to the north, and the outer edge of the rows of houses touches the edge of the fields directly. North of that band, houses with black roofs are packed tightly, and roads gather radially to form an irregular network. From the left half of the frame to the upper left are fields and paddies, with fine strip-shaped lots lined up diagonally. A river flows diagonally across the upper left corner and widens before its mouth.

A shore that became the teeth of a comb

In the 1974-78 photograph, the shape of the shore has changed at its root. The piers jutting into the sea have increased to four, lined up like the teeth of a comb, with long, narrow water surfaces entering between them. The tops of the piers are bright, and ships are berthed along their edges. The water surfaces between them are long and narrow and appear darker the farther in they go. Bright surfaces for placing cargo and edges for berthing ships alternate. The sandy beach has disappeared from the center to the right, replaced by a straight seawall. The beach has been replaced by a line. The breakwaters offshore have become even longer, and in the lower right of the frame a long, bending breakwater encloses a large water surface. The railway yard lying along the shore catches the eye most. Dozens of tracks are bundled in parallel, and the bundle is thickest in the center and narrows toward the east and the west. The number of lines alone shows that this was a place for handing cargo over between ships and freight cars. In one corner to the west a building with a large roof and a bright yard spread, and the city area has grown thicker to the north. The fields and the river at the upper left remain in almost the same form as in 1961-69. Note that the photograph of this era is blacked out along the bottom edge and in part of the lower right. This is because there is an area the photography did not reach, and that is why the water surface seems to break off there.

A band where the tracks disappeared

In today's photograph too, the four piers are in the same positions. The change is in the tops of the piers and the band along the shore. On the piers, white cylindrical tanks and buildings with large roofs line up, and on the central one a building with a round roof and green plantings are placed together. The character of the tips facing the sea seems to have shifted from places for handling cargo to places where people gather. In the band on the shore, that bundle of dozens of tracks has disappeared. A surface that looks like a large roof with fine stripes in rows spreads in the same place, and only a few tracks remain along its edge. The bundled lines have disappeared. In one corner to the west, several rectangular lots sunk black line up. They look not like water but like surfaces where something has been piled up flat. The water surfaces entering between the piers remain at almost the same width as in 1974-78, one of the few parts whose shape does not change across the three photographs. The breakwaters offshore have been extended even further than in 1974-78, and a bright surface of land preparation has newly appeared in the lower right. On the city side, house roofs have become white and large, and wide roads pass diagonally. Almost none of the fields at the upper left remain, and the surface where strip-shaped lots lined up in 1961-69 is filled with houses and facilities. Although the sea side has a different shape in each of the three photographs, only the framework of the city's roads has continued from 1961-69.

The flatness of this land stands out when put into numbers. The eastern measuring point near the port is the lowest at 1.3 m, and even the western point toward the inland is only 3.3 m. The center is 2.0 m, the south 1.8 m and the north 2.6 m. All five points fall within the range from just over 1 m to just over 3 m, and the difference between the highest and lowest points is two meters. If you switch to the east-west cross-section graph, the line runs almost horizontally and drops only slightly at the eastern end as it approaches the water of the port. On a shore extended by reclamation, both the height of the ground and the height of the seawall are numbers decided by people. You cannot read how far water reaches on low land facing the sea from the aerial photographs or from the elevation figures. In the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the tsunami reached this coast as well. It is worth opening the tsunami and flood hazard maps prepared by the City of Iwaki and checking first the area assumed for this shore.

There is one record point for official land prices (Chika Koji), in a residential area of Torobara, Onahama, about 1.2 km from the location, and it begins in 2013. The 29,000 yen per square meter of 2013, the start, is the lowest value in the records up to the 2026 publication, and the highest is 43,700 yen in 2025 and 2026. The difference between the starting point and the 2026 publication is 14,700 yen, but from the figures from 2013 to the 2026 publication, the reason for that movement cannot be decided from this one point alone. The record begins more than thirty years after the piers reached four, and figures from the period when the piers came to stand side by side are not included here.