An article published in the Sankei Shimbun exposes fabricated claims about forced labor and atrocities on Hashima Island. Former residents refute reports by Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung and reveal how misinformation originating in Japan itself has fueled global false narratives about Japan’s wartime history.
The following is an article by genuine journalists published on page 3 of today’s Sankei Shimbun.
2017-06-07
The spread of falsehoods regarding forced labor on Hashima Island.
“There were absolutely no inhumane acts on Hashima Island (Nagasaki Prefecture), known as Gunkanjima, comparable to the Holocaust carried out by Nazi Germany.”
In late May, the “Association of Hashima Island Residents in Pursuit of Historical Truth,” composed of former residents, sent a letter of protest to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In its July 6, 2015 electronic edition, the newspaper reported that on Hashima Island:
(1) during the war, Japanese workers were moved to safe locations and replaced by Chinese and Korean forced laborers;
(2) more than 1,000 of them died;
and (3) their bodies were thrown into the sea or abandoned mine shafts.
The residents’ association was established in January.
When the Hashima coal mine and related sites were registered as UNESCO World Heritage sites in July 2015,
malicious reporting became intolerable, prompting the group to conclude that it was necessary to convey the truth to future generations.
The protest to the Süddeutsche Zeitung is part of efforts to correct the factual record.
In the protest letter, the group countered that while coal mining was indeed harsher work than desk jobs, portraying it as abuse or slavery was contrary to reality.
As of the 6th, no response had been received from the newspaper.
Such reports that deviate far from the facts arise because false information is being disseminated from within Japan itself,
and a representative source of this is the “Oka Masaharu Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museum.”
The museum is located up a slope from the “Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum” in Nagasaki City.
Although it is not a public facility, it receives a constant stream of visitors from overseas.
The museum’s founding statement reads as follows:
“Foreign people who became victims of Japanese aggression and war have been abandoned without compensation even fifty years after the war.
This is because the history of perpetration has been concealed.
There is no act that betrays international trust more than the irresponsible attitude of perpetrators who neither apologize nor make amends to the victims.”
The museum describes comfort women as “sexual slaves,”
explaining that they were “young Korean women hunted down like animals (said to number 200,000 or even more).”
Regarding the “Nanjing Massacre,” it cites Chinese textbooks and states that “no fewer than 300,000 were killed.”
To be continued.