Shame on Japan
Tokyo should not deny wartime forced labor
A UNESCO committee has called for Japan to deliver on its promise to honor victims of wartime forced labor at an information center on its industrial revolution sites registered on UNESCO's World Heritage list. In an annual session Thursday, the World Heritage Committee (WHC) adopted a resolution expressing "strong regrets" over Japan's failure to keep its pledge. This unanimous resolution requested that Tokyo submit an implementation report on the follow-up measures by December next year.
The WHC action came after Japan was found to have failed to provide sufficient explanation about Korean victims of forced labor at the Industrial Heritage Information Center in Tokyo which opened last year. Japan promised to set up the center to remember the victims when 23 Meiji-era industrial sites were added to the heritage list in 2015. The promise was based on the recognition that Koreans and others were taken to some of the sites against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s. One such site is Hashima, also known as Battleship Island, where many Koreans were forced to labor as coal miners during World War II.