The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 7 | Number 3 | Article ID 3303 | Feb 15, 2010

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Remembering and Redressing the Forced Mobilization ofKorean Laborers by Imperial Japan　日帝による朝鮮人労働者の強制動員を記憶にとどめ是正する方向

William Underwood, Kim Hyo Soon, Kil Yun Hyung

Remembering and Redressing theForced Mobilization of KoreanLaborers by Imperial Japan

Kim Hyo Soon and Kil Yun Hyung

Introduction by William Underwood

At a press conference in Seoul last week,Japanese Foreign Minister Okada Katsuyaapologized for Japan’s harsh occupation ofKorea from 1910-1945. “We should rememberthe agonies of people being ruled and neverforget the feelings of victims,” Okada said. Theagony currently being remembered most visiblyconcerns forced labor by Koreans in wartimeJapan. Now led by the Democratic Party andseeking greater regional integration, theJapanese government is moving toward aconciliatory approach to this painful coloniallegacy.

Such a shift was not immediately evident lastDecember, when Japan’s Social InsuranceAgency paid welfare pension refunds of 99 yen(about one dollar) to each of seven Koreanwomen who had been deceived into working ata Nagoya aircraft factory for Mitsubishi HeavyIndustries in 1944-45. Then in their mid-teens,the women were never paid for their work butwere told their wages were being depositedinto savings accounts. The lawsuit they filed inJapan in 1998 eventually resulted in the refundo f t h e p e n s i o n d e p o s i t s t h a t w e r ewithheld—with no adjustment for six decades of

interest and inflation.

Former forced laborer Yang Geum-deok,81, cries during a rally in front of the

Japanese Embassy in Seoul last December24, after receiving her 99-yen payment

from Japan. (AP via JoongAng Daily)

In a major breakthrough, however, YonhapNews Agency reported last month (based on anAsahi Shimbun article) that Japan soon willhand over to South Korea the payroll recordsfor more than 200,000 Korean civilians coercedinto working for private companies in Japan.Provision of the records will end the deepsecrecy surrounding the 200 million yen (abouttwo million dollars) that was earned by Koreanworkers but deposited by Japanese firms intothe national treasury soon after the war. TheSouth Korean state, which under the BasicTreaty of 1965 waived all rights to the fundsheld by Japan, needs this data to fullyimplement a 2007 law granting compensationof up to about $20,000 from its own coffers to

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forced labor victims and their families.

Roughly 700,000 Koreans were forced to workfor private companies within Japan, while morethan 300,000 Koreans were forced to serve inthe Japanese military in fighting and supportroles. In recent years Tokyo has cooperated toa limited extent in providing Seoul withinformation about military conscription andsending the remains of military conscripts toSouth Korea, but the latest move regardingcivilian conscription is unprecedented. It isunclear if the Japan government now plans toplay a more active role in returning the remainsof civilian workers—or what it ultimatelyintends to do with the unpaid wage depositsthat could be worth billions of dollars today.

Disclosure of the payroll records also issignificant for normalization of relationsbetween Japan and North Korea. Pyongyang’sdemands for reparations for damages causedby colonialism, as opposed to the “economiccooperation” formula by which Japan restoredt ies wi th South Korea , appear to bestrengthened by reports that a third of therecords involve workers from northern Korea.(Japan is storing hundreds of sets of remains ofmilitary and civilian conscripts from the north,but in the absence of official relations there areno plans to return these.) Redress claims bynon-Koreans that have languished due to thedearth of historical documentation may benefitindirectly. It turns out that, with sufficientpolitical will, Japan can divulge sensitiverecords that have been locked away since the1940s.

Reconciliation between Japan and Korea willcontinue to be a long, bumpy process.Ownership of the islets that Koreans call Dokdoand Japanese call Takeshima remains bitterlydisputed. Dating back to 1992, there have beenmore than 900 weekly protest demonstrationsin front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul,demanding greater sincerity in redressing the“comfort women” injustice. The systematic

looting of Korean cultural properties during 35years of Japanese rule has barely beendiscussed.

“Traces of Forced Mobilization,” a series nowrunning in the Hankyoreh newspaper,encourages the two countries “to movetogether toward a brighter future after havingresolved remaining issues concerningconscripted labor and other human rightsissues.” Since its establishment in 1988, theHankyoreh has been a distinctive voice inSouth Korea on matters of peace anddemocratization. The Hankyoreh has an onlineEnglish version but, unlike larger Koreanpapers, no Japanese or Chinese versions.Reflecting the publication’s populist outlookand the dynamism of Korean-Japanese civilsociety, though, the Hankyoreh Fan Clubtranslates key articles into Japanese andarchives them online. (See Korean andJapanese descriptions of this volunteertranslation project.)

Presented below, the first three parts of the“Traces of Forced Mobilization” series werewritten by reporters Kim Hyo Soon and Kil YunHyung. Part One deals with the legacy of laborconscription at Aso Mining. Although ousted asJapan’s prime minister last summer, Aso Taroremains a Diet member and Korean survivors offorced labor at his family’s firm plan to visitJapan, seeking apology and compensation, inJune. Part Two describes redress effortsfocusing on Mitsubishi’s former coal minesbeneath islands in Nagasaki Bay. Part Threediscusses hardships facing former laborconscripts on Sakhalin Island today. Thepackage concludes with a column about the2,601 sets of conscripted laborers’ remains stillin Japan.

Korean newspapers ran New Year’s Dayarticles such as “1910-2010: A Century ofAscendence” and “Korea Looks to ElevateNational Prestige.” Coming close on the heelsof the annual crescendo of Japanese war

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memories, August 22 will mark the emotionalcentennial of Japan’s annexation of Korea.Political conditions will dictate whether theJapanese emperor accepts the presidentialinvitation to visit South Korea that has beenextended. "This year will be a great turningpoint in Korea-Japan relations," ForeignMinister Okada told his Korean hosts last week.The accuracy of this prediction will dependpartly on progress regarding forced laborredress. –WU

Aso Group Denies Golf Course Sitsatop Burial Grounds of ConscriptedKorean Laborers

PART ONE – January 27, 2010 (English,Korean, Japanese)

The Japanese politically dynastic Aso family hasfailed to take responsibility for the 504 sets ofhuman remains discovered in the Yoshikumagraves

Kim Hyo Soon

The Chikuho region, located right in the centerof Fukuoka Prefecture on the Japanese island ofKyushu, reigned for decades as Japan’s top coalproducer after mining development started inthe late 19th century. Once its coal yielddropped in the 1960s and the Japanesegovernment switched its basic energy sourcefrom coal to petroleum, the region’s economycontracted considerably. One storied mine afteranother shut down, and the miners, who werewilling to take on mining work to eke out abare livelihood, went off in search of other jobs.

Nowadays it is difficult to find any trace of theold mines in Chikuho. The top three miningcenters here are Iizuka, Nogata and Tagawa.Currently, the only place where the pitheadremains intact is the Hoshu mine site inTagawa’s Kawasaki Village. This is because thegovernment gave instructions that the pithead

be filled up for safety reasons when the minewas shut down. The Hoshu Mine, where aresidential area stands today, is a placer minewhere the shafts descend obliquely. They godown a full kilometer, and it is said that it tooka miner 30 minutes to walk down and anotherhour to come back up. After the mine was shutdown in 1945, its coal exhausted, it stayed alivefor rescue training purposes.

Korean map of the Chikuho region ofKyushu, Japan (Hankyoreh)

Yokogawa Teruo, the 70-year-old expert onforced labor issues who served as my guide onJan. 19, took me inside the pithead so that Icould sense a bit of the kind of workingenvironment the miners faced. Yokogawa, whowas a high school geography teacher before hisretirement in 2001, is active in the FukuokaPrefecture-based Truth-Seeking Network forForced Mobilization. When we reached a spotthat natural light could not reach, it becameimpossible to see anything in front of us.Yokogawa picked up a little stone and tossed itforward, and we heard a “plunk.” We could gono further, as it was not only pitch black butswamped in water as well.

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There were no noticeable signs of the originallook of Chikuho, save for a coal museum, themine’s high chimneys, and the site of the winchthat once rolled up the ropes, left alone by thelocal government for preservation purposes.Fewer st i l l were traces of the forcedmobilization that brought masses of Korean andChinese laborers here to suffer human rightsabuses until Japan’s defeat in World War II.Just after the defeat, the Japanese governmentand mining companies either obliterated orconcealed the related data, and the old miningsites were mostly turned into apartmenthousing and parks. However, no matter howmuch the government and the companies thatran the mines feign innocence, there is noconcealing the truth of history. The humanremains that have emerged from the old miningsites, where beatings, abuse and accidentaldeaths once ran rampant amid poor workingconditions, provide clear evidence as to howthings were at the time.

The Aso Iizuka Golf Club, located in the Keisenvillage of Kaho-gun, Fukuoka Prefecture, isemblematic of the forces seeking to conceal thepast. Located about 15 minutes by car fromIizuka Station, it was built on the oldYoshikuma Mine site, which was run by the Asofamily. This site, where piles of the waste stoneproduced when coal is mined once stood, wasrefurbished and opened as a 27-hole golfcourse in October 1973. Its chairman isRepresentative Aso Taro, who was primeminister of Japan before stepping down lastAugust after a defeat in the general election. Astone monument next to the course’s entrancebears the name of Suzuki Zenko, Aso’s father-in-law, who served as prime minister for overtwo years beginning in 1980. Aso’s maternalgrandfather is Yoshida Shigeru, who laid thegroundwork of conservative politics in Japanafter the war. With three generations of primeministers represented, no family with moreprestige exists in the Japanese political world.

A few hundred meters from the entrance is an

old supermarket. It was built on the location ofthe Yoshikuma mine’s bathhouse. It is said thatthere was a pithead nearby. A sign hangingthere reads “Aso Yasaka,” perhaps a reflectiono f t h e A s o G r o u p ’ s i n f l u e n c e . T h eneighborhood’s administrative district isYasaka, Keisen Village, Kaho-gun. Behind thesupermarket is the Yasaka citizens’ center, witha children’s playground situated next to it. It isquiet and peaceful, with warm rays of wintersunshine falling over it. Shrouding this setting,which looks like something out of any otherquiet country village, is a brutal historyunsuited to its tranquil mood. BetweenDecember 1982 and January 1983, bulldozerswere pulling up the ground here to build thenew village citizens’ center when the remainsof three people were found fully intact. Theshocked villagers notified Aso, the owner of theland. Later it came to light that the site was acemetery for people without surviving next ofkin. Buried there were those among the peoplewho died in or around the mine who had nofamily to collect their remains. The Japanesemedia paid little attention to the discovery.

A map of such burial sites for the dead ofYoshikuma Mine without surviving family,drafted by Aso Mining for internal use, wasfilled with records of where remains werelocated. It indicated there were no fewer than504 sets of remains. Thirty-three had stonemarkers, twenty-one had wooden markers, andthe remaining 450 had no markers at all. Themap was never disclosed by Japanese media. Itis now almost impossible to determine theidentity of the remains, since any materials thatmight provide a clue are no longer extant.Nearly all of the Japanese who did physicallabor in mines during the Japanese Empirewere from the lower class. Second and thirdsons of poor farming villages without ricepaddies to inherit went to work at the mines ifthey had no better means of survival. A numberof them were burakumin, subject todiscrimination from society. When people died,those who had no one to take their remains

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were simply buried in the ground. Even if therewas an intention to cremate them, the highprice of coal resulted in their effectiveabandonment.

A view of the front gate at the Aso-IizukaGolf Club, of which former Japanese prime

minister Taro Aso is chairman. (Kim HyoSoon)

It is very likely that some of the remains fromthe Yoshikuma cemeteries are those of Koreansrecruited or conscripted into labor during theJapanese Empire. The Yoshikuma mine was thelargest of the seven mines run by Aso Mining inthe Chikuho area. According to figures fromJanuary 1928, before forced mobilizationbegan, there were 705 Koreans in total workingat Aso Mining, with 162 at the YoshikumaMine. The figure increased rapidly as forcedmobilization began in earnest.

On the evening of January 25, 1936, a firebroke out in the Yoshikuma mine shaft, takingthe lives of 29 people. Twenty-five of them wereKoreans. Some have attested that the companysealed up the entrance out of concerns that thefire might spread, even though it knew therewere survivors in the shaft. The report on thetragedy in the January 27 edition of theFukuoka Nichinichi Newspaper included thenames of many Koreans among the deceasedand severely injured. The article also includes asentence that reads, “With a large number of

Korean laborers in the shaft, the scene waschaotic, and at the pithead was the sad sight ofKorean women who had rushed over out ofconcern for their fathers, husbands andbrothers and collapsed from weeping.” There isa simple reason why the percentage of Koreanvictims was overwhelmingly high when anaccident occurred in the mines. It is becauseKoreans were the ones mainly sent into themines where large quantities of gas presenteddanger.

Today, an outsider would not have any idea atall about what was where in the YoshikumaMine site without guidance from an expert whohas studied the problem of forced mobilizationon the scene. After a long absence, Yoshikumadid show up in the Japanese news in December2008. It was not because of Korean victims, butbecause of the sudden surfacing of a storyabout abuse against Allied POWs who had beenbrought here for forced labor during the PacificWar. Representatives from the DemocraticParty of Japan (DPJ), which was then theopposition party, asked then-Prime MinisterAso about the mobilization of 300 Allied POWsfrom Australia, Great Britain and theNetherlands to perform labor in a POW campwithin the Yoshikuma Mine. Two of theAustralian soldiers died at the mine. Aso, whowas born in 1940, has dodged this issuewhenever it has come up by saying that he wasvery young then and that he has no memoriesof it. However, he was ultimately forced toadmit the existence of the Allied POWs whenthe Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfareacknowledged the belated discovery of relateddocuments stored in its warehouse.

The Aso Group, however, maintains that it hasnothing to do with the 504 sets of humanremains discovered in the Yoshikuma graves. Itsimply says that the remains were collectedduring the redevelopment process and interredin a charnel house. Naturally, it does notacknowledge any responsibility. It is entirelyunbecoming for a family line that has produced

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three generations of prime ministers.

Remains of Unidentified KoreanConscripted Laborers Remain atTakashima Island

PART TWO – February 3, 2010 (English,Korean, Japanese)

Observers say it would be possible to identifythe remains if the Japanese governmentdemands the temples examine relateddocuments such as death registries

Kim Hyo Soon

“Takashima, Hashima, Sakito.”

These three words were on the lips of minersand people of the Nagasaki Prefecture miningindustry during the period of the JapaneseEmpire. Today, there is a bridge leading toSakito and it can be reached from centralNagasaki by traveling about two hours on theexpressway, but at that time all three islandswere cut off completely from the outside worldby rough waves. Minors called them the “GhostIslands,” meaning that anyone who set foot onthem was unlike to come back alive. Even themost experienced ones who had worked in thecoalmines of the Chikuho area, the site of thelargest coalfield on Kyushu, were afraid to goto the Ghost Islands. The order of the sites wasdetermined by the rhythm of Japanesepronunciation, but in terms of poor workingenvironments, they are all said to have beenmore or less the same.

Chief among the things the three islands had incommon was the presence of large-scalesubmarine coalmines. Miners are said to havetraveled down to depths of up to 900 meters offHashima for underwater mining.

A second commonality was the fact thatMitsubishi Corporation was in charge of

managing operations for all three island miningsites. Since the exploration of underwatermines required the most up-to-date miningtechnology and was tremendously expensive,the project was taken over from small to mid-sized mining companies by Mitsubishi, whichhad gone from triumph to triumph afterbecoming in league with the governmentfollowing the Meiji Restoration.

Mitsubishi, meaning “three diamonds,”profited from massive use of forced labor

but has never compensated victims.

The third thing the islands shared was aconsiderable presence of Koreans, who wereforced to endure the hardship of mining onfaraway islands through recruitment andconscription. Among them were the victims ofso-called “double conscription,” who wereforced to work in the mines of Sakhalin duringthe Japanese Empire and then came to theGhost Islands late in the war.

On Jan. 22, I took a high-speed passenger ferryfrom Nagaski Terminal to Takashima, locatedabout 14.5 kilometers away. When I arrived atthe Takashima pier after a trip that lastedabout 35 minutes, I saw a sign indicating thatthis was a tourist site. A large statue stoodabout 20 meters away from the ferry’s

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anchorage. The statue, erected in December2004, was an image of Iwasaki Yataro(1835-1885) , founder o f Mitsubish iCorporation. Mitsubishi took over theTakashima mine in March 1881. It went on torun the mine until it was closed in November1986, which means that it maintained itsinfluence as a big player on this island for noless than 105 years.

Located right at the center of the island is themountain Gongen-zan, which rises 120 metersabove sea level. About halfway up the mountainis a shrine, and beside it lies a flat plot of landwith a memorial marker in one corner. Thatmarker was erected by Mitsubishi Coal MiningCompany two years after the mine closeddown. On the upper right of the marker is aflower relief with scratches around it. TakazaneYasunori, the 71-year-old director of the OkaMasaharu Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museumwho accompanied me, told me that there wasoriginally an inscription where the relief iscurrently, but that someone with a grudgedestroyed it with a sledgehammer. He said thatafter repairing the parts that had fallen away,the company covered up the remains of theinscription with a relief.

Mitsubishi Coal Mining Company erected amemorial honoring miners beside

Takashima Shrine in 1988. A controversialinscription about Japanese, Korean andChinese miners “sharing joy and sorrow

together” was destroyed and later replacedby the flower relief. (Kim Hyo Soon)

What could have been written in the inscriptionthat would cause someone to act in such ahostile manner bearing a grudge? The originaltext consisted of two paragraphs. The first saidthat those honored had made greatcontributions to the development of theJapanese economy and the promotion of thelocal community, but that they were unable todeal with the flow of the times and had loweredthe curtain on a glittering history lasting over acentury. It is the second paragraph that clearlyshows Mitsubishi’s understanding ofconscripted labor. The somewhat lengthyparagraph reads as follows.

“We long for the days in which many workersand their families, including people who camefrom China and the Korean Peninsula,transcended race and nationality to share oneheart in tending the flame of coal mining andsharing joy and sorrow together, and we prayfor the eternal rest of those who lost their livesduring their work or perished on this land byerecting this monument to comfort all theirsouls.”

When the contents of the inscription becameknown, ethnic Koreans who had endured harshtreatment at the site during the JapaneseEmpire were unable to conceal their anger.There was nothing written to indicate thatKorean and Chinese workers had been broughtthere against their will. The people who werebrought to the Ghost Islands endured harshlabor, beatings, and punishments, and anumber of them died in accidents or frommalnutrition. Japanese civic groups protested,charging that expressions such as “sharing joyand sorrow” flew in the face of historical fact,but the company refused to modify theinscription, claiming that it had already passedthrough prior discussions with the localheadquarters of the Korean Residents Union inJapan (Mindan) and the General Association of

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Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon). It wasin the midst of this controversy that thedestruction of the inscription took place.

Staff members of the Oka MasaharuMemorial Nagasaki Peace Museum cleanthe “Senninzuka” memorial tower, which

originally contained an ossuaryunderneath. (Kim Hyo Soon)

Another ten minutes of walking from the shrinetakes you to the Takashima Cemetery. This is apublic cemetery for residents of the island.Perhaps because this is one of the areas inJapan where the Christian faith took root thefastest, one can see quite a number ofheadstones engraved with the baptismal namesof the deceased. As you head inward, thecemetery ends and bushes appear before you.If you follow the faint trail between the bushes,you can find a very old stone monument, with amarker explaining that it is a memorial tower.It has no official name, but locals call the site“Senninzuka,” which translates as “thousand-person tomb.” It is said that the monumentoriginally had an ossuary underneath, whichcontained the remains of countless people whocame to work at the mines and ended up dyingin a foreign land. These included the remains ofKoreans who were conscripted to perform laborduring the Japanese Empire and died whiletoiling on the islands of Takashima andHashima. A program made in the mid-1970s byNBC, Nagasaki’s local broadcasting network,

contains an image showing a Korean name onone of the boxes of remains interred atSenninzuka.

However, something astonishing happenedwhen Mitsubishi moved the Senninzukaremains to a nearby temple during the closureof the Takashima Mine, claiming that it waslaying them to eternal rest. The companymoved the ashes into cup-sized jars andinterred them in Kinshoji, a temple near thecemetery, then sealed up the ossuary that hadbeen underground. Around 115 such jars weremoved to the temple from Senninzuka at thetime. About ten of them had Japanese nameswritten on them, while the remainder hadnothing. Under the circumstances, it is verylikely that the unknown remains belonged toKorean victims, but at present it is difficult toconfirm in any way. For around a decade, theAssociation of Family Members of KoreanVictims at Hashima and Japanese civic groupshave been calling on Mitsubishi MaterialsCorporation, the successor to Mitsubishi CoalMining, to dig up the sealed ossuary, but thecompany has stubbornly refused to do so,claiming that it “might harm the dignity of theirsouls.”

Museum Director Takazane Yasunori called this“incredibly wicked and craven.” While he hadmaintained a gentle expression during hiswords up until that point, his tone becamecoarse as he talked about Mitsubishi‘s attitude.It would be possible to identify the remains, hesaid, if the Japanese government demandedwith sincerity that the temples involvedexamine related documents such as deathregistries.

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Korean names that were on urns in the“Senninzuka” ossuary (left) were replaced

by numbers when the urns weretransferred to Kinshoji temple (right).

(Hankyoreh)

There are still no precise figures on the numberof deaths among Koreans taken to the threeGhost Islands. Japanese researchers estimatethat around 6,000 conscripts were taken toSakito, and 4,000 to Takashima and Hashima.According to an investigation based on reportsby surviving family members, the South Koreangovernment’s Truth Commission on ForcedMobilization under Japanese Imperialism putsthe number of those who died on the islands at59. However, it is likely that the number ofactual victims is far greater.

Korean Former ConscriptedLaborers Live Out Last Days onRussia’s Sakhalin Island

PART THREE – February 10, 2010 (English,Korean, Japanese)

Koreans conscripted for labor in coal mines byJapan were unable to return to Korea followingLiberation in 1945 as a result of ignorant policydecisions by the South Korean and Japanesegovernments

Kil Yun Hyung

“So, I have ended up with three names.”

Cho Yeong-jae, 78, spoke with a respectableGyeongsang Province dialect. Our meeting tookplace in Boshnyakovo (called “Nishisakutan” inJapanese), at a mining village where I arrivedafter a six-hour car ride northwest fromYuzhno-Sakhalinsk, the largest city on Russia’sSakhalin Island. The birch forests thatsurrounded the village had turned white from afew days of snowfall, and Boshnyakovo’s smallharbor, facing the maritime province of Siberia,is said to still be frequented by Korean andJapanese boats bearing coal for burning atthermal power plants.

Cho was born in 1932 in Pungsan, a townshipin the county (now city) of Andong in NorthGyeongsang Province. In 1942, he came toSakhalin following his father, who had beenconscripted into labor service as a coal miner.When he enrolled in the island’s Japaneseschool, the young man’s name became“Matsumoto Eisai,” and when Japan lost to theSoviet Union in 1945 and the entire islandbecame Soviet territory, his name was changedonce again, this time to “Yuri Cho.” Nearly 70years have passed since then, but Cho has beenunable to leave Sakhalin behind.

“When I came here in 1942, Koreans werepacked into three hambaj ip (workerdormitories). Over here, they were mostly fromGyeongsang Province, and down at Shakhterskthey were mainly from North Korea. Therewere a lot of people at Kitakozawa (Telnovskiy),from Chungcheong Province and JeollaProvince. The coal is good here. If the Koreansdid not follow orders, they were taken off to thetakobeya (a detention facility for mineworkers), and whenever someone went inthere, he returned not right in the head.”

During the period of the Japanese Empire,Sakhalin was called Karafuto, which in the Ainulanguage means “island of birches.” Half of theisland, the portion south of 50 degrees northlatitude, was ceded by Russia to Japan afterJapan’s victory in the 1905 Russo-Japanese

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War. Japan subsequently went to workexploiting the island’s rich natural resources. Itmade up for the lack of workers by bringingpeople in from Japan and Korea. It has beenconfirmed that 7,801 Koreans (6,120 of themminers) worked at 25 of the 26 mines operatedin southern Sakhalin as of late July 1944.

Kim Yun-deok and Kim Mal-sun at theirhome in Sinegorsk in central southern

Sakhalin, Russia. (Kil Yun Hyung)

Eighty-seven-year-old Kim Yun-deok, whom Imet in the town of Sinegorsk in centralsouthern Sakhalin, hails from Gyeongsan Cityin North Gyeongsang Province. After arrivingon the island in 1943 in place of his father, heworked for around two years as a miner. Anestimated 43,000 Koreans were living insouthern Sakhalin, including Kim, just afterLiberation in August 1945. A majority of themcame from what would become known as SouthKorea after Liberation.

For Kim, Liberation was an “indefinite leave”that came one day out of the blue. “I headed towork one day and they said I didn’t have towork. Japan had lost, they said,” he recalled.After Liberation, Sakhalin was in pandemoniumwith a mixture of Soviet troops who had comesouth and Japanese and Koreans trying toevacuate to the mainland. The Japanese,agitated with the shock of defeat and fear of

the Soviet forces, carried out massacres ofKoreans at sites like the southwest Sakhalintowns of Porzaskoye (Mizuho in Japanese) andLeonidov (Kamishisuka). “We had beenliberated, but they said those Japanese dumpedthe Koreans at Homsk (a port city in southwestSakhalin) and went by themselves. They evensay they killed the Koreans who were on board.If the Soviet forces had come just a bit later, allof the Koreans would have been dead.”

Even after the post-Liberation chaos ended,Kim was unable to return to his homeland.Through a project to repatriate Japanese fromSouth Sakhalin beginning in December 1946,some 292,590 Japanese headed home, but theKoreans on the island were excluded as “nolonger Japanese.” Kim ultimately obtainedSoviet citizenship and spent another 37 yearsas a miner before retiring in 1982.

I met 76-year-old Ahn Bok-sun in the miningcity of Uglegorsk in northeast Sakhalin. Hailingfrom Ulsan, she came to Sakhalin in 1942,following her father Ahn Cha-mun (1902-1980).While working at the Kitakozawa (Zelnovskiy)Mine in the northeast part of the island, he wassubjected to “double conscription” in August1944 and sent to the Japanese island of Kyushu.When the war ended, he stowed away on a boatin Hokkaido and arrived home [in Sakhalin]after a journey of hardship, but he sufferedfrom lingering health problems and was unableto do much work. Ahn said that her fatherwalked over 400 kilometers from the southernport of Korshakov to find his wife and children.

She recalls him telling her, “It was terrible. TheNagaski mines have you digging coalunderwater. They beat us with leather strapswhile we were working.” In 1998, Ahn’shusband went to the bank to convert a largeamount of currency ahead of a visit to hishometown in South Korea. The South Koreangovernment has allowed Koreans in Sakhalin tovisit their hometowns since 1989, thus herhusband had been preparing to participate in

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the first hometown visit. He was followed homeand killed by members of the Russian mafia.

Hashima, also known as Battleship Island,was one of three islands in Nagasaki Bay

where Mitsubishi forced Korean andChinese workers to extract coal from

undersea mines.

However, the homeland that he was never ableto visit viewed the family and other Koreanconscripted laborers of Sakhalin as a “potentialthreat to security.”

According to data from the Busan MetropolitanPolice Agency’s security division unearthed bythe Hankyoreh at the National Archives ofKorea, in 1990 the South Korean governmenthad detectives from that division monitor theactivity of Koreans living in Sakhalin who werevisiting their hometowns in Korea at that time24 hours a day. Ahn said, “Now I have nohusband, and I do not want to go back to Koreaand leave my children alone.”

On Jan. 26, the Second Public Cemetery in theback hills of Boshnyakovo was buried in driftsof white snow. There I visited the grave of ChoiWol-ju (1905-1986), the grandmother of 58-year-old Choi Jong-guk, head of the Koreanresidents’ association in Uglegorsk. (SomeKoreans in Sakhalin have adopted the Russianpractice of wives taking their husband’ssurnames.) All around were the graves ofKoreans who had died on the island.

Cho Yeong-jae’s home lies five minutes by carfrom the back hills where the graves arelocated. Hanging on the wall there is a 2007calendar from home, which he picked up when

visiting Seoul for the Lunar New Year’s andChuseok holidays. Cho said, “Now that I havelived in Russia for more than 60 years, I ammore used to the name Yuri than the nameYeong-jae.”

“My wife is sick and I cannot stop thinkingabout my children. I want to go home, but Icannot,” he added. Although the South Koreangovernment has allowed the Korean formerconscr ipted laborers in Sakhal in topermanently return home since 1992, thegovernment does not allow their children toreturn permanently. As a result, this had led tocriticism that the policy concerning Koreanformer conscripted laborers living in Sakhalincould result in another case of Korean familydispersal.

Will he also be buried in the mountaincemetery when he dies? As I left, he clasped myhand and repeatedly thanked me for visiting.

Returning Conscripted Laborers’Remains in Japan to South Korea

COLUMN – January 20, 2010

Kim Hyo Soon

It was reported last week that the remains of2,601 Koreans who died while performingconscripted labor during the Japaneseoccupation are currently in Japan. The SouthKorean government’s Truth Commission onForced Mobil izat ion under JapaneseImperialism said that this figure, calculatedbetween mid-2005 and late 2009, does notinclude some remains that were mixedtogether, so the number of remains that havenever returned home is likely much higher.

Every time I see one of these reports, it isdifficult to stop part of me from flaring up inrage. No longer can we use the common excusethat our division into North Korea and South

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Korea and our competition with one anotherhas left us with no room to worry about smallthings like human remains.

The first person to systematically analyze theheartbreaking lives of Koreans drafted intoforced labor in Japanese society was ParkGyeong-sik, a former instructor of KoreaUniversity in Tokyo. Park, who in 1965 released“Records on the Forced Mobilization ofKoreans,” said that a great impetus was thecol lect ion of remains by the Chinesegovernment of Chinese forced laborers whodied in wartime Japan.

Li Dequan, who came to Japan in the 1950s aschair of the Red Cross Society of China andcontributed to recovering the remains ofChinese victims, was born a minister’sdaughter and married Feng Yuxiang, a Chinesewarlord. She would later serve as Minister ofHealth after the establishment of the People’sRepublic of China. Her visit to Japan wasrecorded as the first by a Chinese governmentofficial since the communist administration wasestablished on the mainland. The road leadingup to the visit was full of twists and turns, as itwas a time when the U.S. recognized theKuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek,chased off to the island of Taiwan, as the onlylegal Chinese government and was adopting apolicy of containment against mainland China.There are a number of implications for us inLi’s process of collecting the Chinese remains,at a time when the issue of unrepatriatedremains still weighs heavily upon us.

Three factors played a part in resolving theremains issue in the absence of diplomaticrelations between Japan and China. The firstwas self-reflection within the JapaneseBuddhist community, which had openlycooperated with the policies of the imperialgovernment during the war. Toward the end ofWorld War II around 40,000 Chinese laborerswere forcibly taken from China and sent towork at 135 sites throughout Japan, where they

endured harsh treatment. It is estimated thatsome 7,000 of them died. Some JapaneseBuddhists and progressives viewed the returnof their remains as a point of departure for newrelations with China, and they joined forces toestablish the Memorial Committee for MartyredChinese Captives.

The second factor was the flexible diplomacy ofthe government in Beijing, which madeappropriate use of the remaining Japaneseresident population in China and the Japanesewar crimes card. In late December 1952, Chinadelivered a radio announcement on its study ofthe remaining Japanese population and saidthat the Chinese government intended tocooperate and help the remaining Japanesepopulation wishing to return to their homecountry. The Japanese Red Cross Society,Japan-China Friendship Association and PeaceLiaison Committee then sent delegations toBeijing for negotiations. Even at a time whenthe U.S. and China were engaged in a full-onclash during the Korean War, passenger boatstraveled back and forth between Japan andChina, filled with Japanese returning home.Returning home to China at the same timewere the remains of around 5,000 Chinesevictims. The Chinese accepted these remainsnot as those of prisoners-of-war but as “martyrsin the anti-Japanese struggle.”

The third factor was the political world, whichviewed expanded trade and economic exchangewith mainland China as essential for Japan’seconomic revival. Buddhists and the MemorialCommittee for Martyred Chinese Captivesinvited a delegation from the Chinese RedCross Society to Japan as a gesture of gratitudeto China for repatriating the remainingJapanese residents, but the Cabinet under then-Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru balked atgiving its approval. The delegation finallyarrived at Haneda Airport in late October 1954,after a resolution for the invitation was adoptedby the Diet.

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Police confiscate a mask of the Japaneseemperor during a February 7

demonstration in Seoul. Many Koreans saythat any visit to South Korea by the

emperor must be preceded by an imperialapology for Japan’s colonial rule. (Kim

Bong-kyu / Hankyoreh)

It is very unfortunate that the Buddhists andprogressives in Japan at the time did not focusvery much on the repatriation of Koreanremains. However, before the TruthCommission on Forced Mobilization underJapanese Imperialism was launched in 2004,there was essentially no organization in theSouth Korean government exclusively handlingthe issue of Korean remains.

The commission will be forced to shut downsoon unless separate legislative measures aretaken. When will there ever be signs ofresolution in the drawn-out process ofreclaiming these Korean remains?

[The views presented in this column are thewriter’s own, and do not necessarily reflectthose of The Hankyoreh.]

Kim Hyo Soon and Kil Yun Hyung are reportersat the Hankyoreh, where the above fourarticles appeared on January 27, February 3,February 10 and January 20, 2010. Posted at The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focuson February 15, 2010.

Recommended citation: Kim Hyo Soon and KilYun Hyung, "Remembering and Redressing theForced Mobilization of Korean Laborers byImperial Japan," The Asia-Pacific Journal,7-3-10, February 15, 2010.

See also:

William Underwood, New Era for Japan-KoreaHistory Issues: Forced Labor Redress EffortsBegin to Bear Fruit

William Underwood, "Names, Bones andUnpaid Wages: Reparations for Korean ForcedLabor in Japan" Part 1 & Part 2

Lukasz Zablonski and Philip Seaton, TheHokkaido Summit as a Springboard forGrassroots In i t ia t ives : The “Peace,Reconciliation and Civil Society” Symposium