History
Hatsushima Station opened on 15 December 1938 as an unstaffed simple stop on the Kisei West Line in what is now Arida, Wakayama Prefecture. From 1942 it served a private siding for the Toa Nenryo (today ENEOS) refinery next door, and a staffed eight-person operation grew up around the freight traffic. A new wooden station building completed in March 1944 was burnt out in a July 1945 air raid and rebuilt in March 1949. The line was unified as the Kisei Main Line in July 1959, freight ended in 1986, and JR West took over at privatisation on 1 April 1987. The station was destaffed on 17 March 2018.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
In March 2025, JR West replaced the 1949 wooden building with one assembled in six hours from four 3D-printed components — believed to be the first 3D-printed station building in the world, with city-flower mikan and scabbardfish motifs in its walls.