Drawing on Koko Kato’s article “South Korea and Asahi Immediately Criticize the Industrial Heritage Information Centre,” published in the monthly magazine Hanada, this chapter discusses the visit of activist Hideki Yano, reporting by journalists from Asahi Shimbun and Kyodo News, photographs and testimony concerning Hashima Island, and testimony by former Hashima labor-union secretary-general Tomohiro Tada, while examining the treatment of primary sources in news reporting.

2020-07-23

This chapter was originally published on July 23, 2020.
It quotes from an article by Koko Kato, Managing Director of the National Congress of Industrial Heritage, published in the monthly magazine Hanada under the title “South Korea and Asahi Immediately Criticize the Industrial Heritage Information Centre,” and presents the author’s views on the Industrial Heritage Information Centre, reporting on Gunkanjima, activists, primary sources, and testimony.
For this republication on July 27, 2026, the original Japanese text above has been reproduced without alteration.
Text
2020-07-23
As an aside, there were two men who came together with Mr. Yano.
They did not present business cards, and I wondered who on earth they were.
Later, when I checked the names they had written down upon entering the Centre, I found that the two men were—
The following is from an article by Koko Kato, Managing Director of the National Congress of Industrial Heritage, published in the monthly magazine Hanada under the title “South Korea and Asahi Immediately Criticize the Industrial Heritage Information Centre.”
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but for people throughout the world.
The Japanese public will, I believe, learn for the first time about the outrageous manner in which reporters from Asahi Shimbun and Kyodo News conducted their reporting, and about the existence of an activist such as Hideki Yano, whom almost all Japanese people had previously never heard of and whom it would, in my view, be no exaggeration to call a traitor to the country.
At the same time, they will surely feel profound anger toward them.
When I think of the enormous damage that Japan will continue to suffer because Asahi Shimbun was not forced to cease publication six years ago in August, I cannot help feeling deeply dismayed.
The continued existence of Asahi Shimbun, in my view, brings nothing but pitch-black darkness upon Japan.
One indication of this is NHK’s News Watch 9 and the expression of its female presenter, Wakuda, resembling that of someone presiding over a funeral—reporting that, in my view, creates the impression that Japan, actually the finest country in the world, is somehow the world’s worst and most problem-ridden country.
Then there is Yuriko Koike, who calls herself the governor of Tokyo, yet, after clusters emerged from Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district, neither disclosed the names of host clubs nor ordered them to cease operations and instead began attacking the national government, concerned only, in my view, with self-promotion, etc.
Coinciding with these developments is the fact that China has been expanding its incursions around the Senkaku Islands.
Am I the only person who even senses Chinese scheming behind the latest increase in the number of infections?
The preceding portion is omitted.
A Prominent Activist Visits the Centre
A reporter from a South Korean media organization looked at the materials and angrily said, “Why do you display only materials that conform to the position of the Japanese government?
This is unacceptable!”
I replied:
“In Japan, we cannot force people to give testimony that suits the South Korean government or the Japanese government, nor can we deliberately falsify data.”
What did the South Korean reporter say?
“That cannot be true.
Didn’t the Japanese government falsify data in the Moritomo and Kake affairs?”
No matter what facts are presented to them, they will not accept them unless the exhibition mourns the victims in the manner they want and the materials and data conform to that narrative.
Perhaps some South Korean media outlets had no interest in primary sources or testimony, because they said, “We have no time,” and left without even visiting Zone 3.
The other day, Mr. Hideki Yano, secretary-general of the Japan-Korea Joint Action for Legislation to Compensate Korean Forced-Labor Victims, visited the Centre.
When the UNESCO World Heritage Committee met in Bonn, Germany, in 2015, Mr. Yano joined a South Korean civic group campaigning against the inscription and made a major presentation in the lobby of the hotel where committee members were staying, declaring, “Gunkanjima was Hell Island!”
He is also a well-known activist who, as secretary-general of the Association Supporting the Former Conscripted Workers’ Lawsuits Against Nippon Steel, held a press conference together with the plaintiffs after the South Korean Supreme Court ruling and appeared in news reports.
There is no denying that Mr. Yano’s message at a symposium held in the hotel where World Heritage Committee members were staying left some of the delegates from 150 countries with an impression along the lines of, “Perhaps Gunkanjima was no different from Auschwitz.”
I thought this was a good opportunity to ask him about questions I had long had concerning his activities.
As an aside, there were two men who came together with Mr. Yano.
They did not present business cards, and I wondered who on earth they were.
Later, after checking the names they had written down upon entering the Centre, I learned that the two men were Asahi Shimbun reporter Daisuke Shimizu and Kyodo News reporter Nishino, both covering the wartime labor issue professionally.
I cannot understand why they concealed who they were and came to gather information in what seemed almost like an ambush.
A Pamphlet Full of Falsehoods
Let me introduce the exchange between Mr. Yano and me.
“Who asked you to make the presentation in Germany?”
“The Institute for Research on National Issues.”
The institute is a South Korean civic organization known for researching and pursuing people identified as pro-Japanese collaborators.
I showed Mr. Yano a pamphlet that the institute had distributed at the World Heritage Committee venue in Bonn, Germany, in 2015.
The cover used photographs of emaciated workers and of workers lying down while digging in a coal mine, but our investigation found that the photographs had nothing to do with Korean workers.
“The people in the photographs used on this pamphlet’s cover are Japanese.
Their sources have been identified, and none of them is related to Korean workers.
Were you the person who supplied these photographs to the institute?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Do you know Mr. Seo Gyeong-deok?
Are you working with him?”
Mr. Seo Gyeong-deok, a visiting professor at Sungshin Women’s University, is the person who spent 100 million yen to broadcast an advertising video in New York’s Times Square alleging brutality on Hashima.
The photographs used in that advertisement were also unrelated to Korean conscripted workers.
Mr. Yano nevertheless said, “I don’t know anyone like that.”
“Seo Gyeong-deok is a member of the institute, and you don’t know him?”
“What?
Was that so?”
When I explained that there had been no discrimination or abuse of the kind alleged on Gunkanjima, Mr. Yano responded:
“But the person who served as secretary-general of the Hashima labor union wrote that ‘Gunkanjima was Hell Island.’”
“I also interviewed that person, and he says, ‘I was deceived by the Asahi Shimbun reporter who came to interview me.’”
“What?”
Asahi’s Ambush
The person Mr. Yano was referring to was former island resident Tomohiro Tada, 92, who devoted many years to union members as secretary-general of the Hashima labor union.
His testimony is somewhat lengthy, but I will introduce it here.
“I spent many years involved in union activities on Hashima after the war, and what I felt at the time was that there was a tendency to say that absolutely everything about the prewar period was bad.
For example, even things written in the Imperial Rescript on Education, such as being devoted to one’s parents or brothers and sisters getting along, were rejected entirely.
I think one of the parties responsible for creating that atmosphere was the Japanese mass media.”
“When it comes to Hashima, whenever an article about the island appeared, it would invariably end by saying, ‘Koreans were abused.’
It would say that such a past existed.
I would become angry and wonder who had ever verified such facts.”
“On the 20th anniversary of the closing of the Hashima coal mine, around 360 of our former colleagues gathered from across the country.
At that time, a young Asahi Shimbun reporter came to me and said he absolutely wanted to write an article about it.
He said he had been moved by the fact that so many people had assembled even 20 years after the mine had closed.
But at that point I firmly refused.
I also refused his request to borrow photographs of Hashima.
I told him that the reason was that whenever you newspaper reporters introduce Hashima, you always write that Koreans were abused, and I simply cannot accept that.
I told him that I had no right to stop him from writing an article, but that I did not want anything published as my own comments.”
“Then he came back several times and said that this was the article he had been assigned, that personally he wanted to write about the 20th anniversary of the mine’s closure, and, ‘Mr. Tada, please lend me the photographs.’
He promised that he would absolutely not write anything saying that ‘Koreans were abused.’
Because the young reporter came again and again, I began to feel sorry for him, so I lent him the photographs and agreed.
But when the newspaper article appeared, the Korean issue was once again featured prominently.
When I learned that, I was furious and telephoned the newspaper company to protest.
But I could not get a satisfactory answer at all.
After I called several times, I was told that the reporter himself was no longer there.
They said he had been transferred.
There was nothing I could do.
I did not even know where he had been transferred.
Then, several years later, a letter and photographs arrived from him.
It was a letter of apology together with the photographs, saying that what had appeared was not what he himself had intended.
He said that, without his knowledge, his superior had added material and the story had been published that way.
After that, I stopped reading Asahi Shimbun.”
To be continued.