Originally published on February 11, 2020. Based on a Sankei Shimbun article, this essay discusses the misuse by Korean media of a photograph from a coal mine in Fukuoka Prefecture in reports on wartime labor at Battleship Island. It criticizes South Korea’s anti-Japanese education, its historical warfare against Japan, Hollywood’s ignorance and hypocrisy, and the reality of a totalitarian anti-Japanese state that distorts facts to denigrate Japan.

February 11, 2020
The reality of the totalitarian state created by a country of bottomless evil and plausible lies, which has continued Nazism under the name of anti-Japanese education for 75 years after the war, is published in today’s Sankei Shimbun.
The reality of the totalitarian state created by a country of bottomless evil and plausible lies, which has continued Nazism under the name of anti-Japanese education for 75 years after the war, is published in today’s Sankei Shimbun.
Not only this essay, but this article as well, is something Hollywood people must read with their eyes wide open.
To begin with, this time, the film looked like a copy of an American B movie… the scenes of poverty probably reminded Americans of the lives of black Americans who had long been driven into poverty, and they may have felt a sense of familiarity with it.
The hypocrisy of Hollywood, dominated by people with extremely high salaries, giving Best Picture to a film simply because it depicted inequality is one of the greatest reasons why I withdrew from watching the Academy Awards ceremony and from watching Hollywood films.
Korean Media Misuses a Photograph Again
History War
It became clear through Sankei Shimbun reporting on the 10th that a photograph reported by Korean media as showing Korean workers forced to perform wartime labor at the Hashima Coal Mine in Nagasaki City, commonly known as Battleship Island, was in fact taken in Fukuoka Prefecture before 1935 and had nothing to do with the so-called wartime laborers.
On December 3 of last year, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo-affiliated television station JTBC and Yonhap News TV took up in their news programs a Japanese government report concerning the “Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution,” which UNESCO had posted on its website the previous day, and reported on it critically, saying that it did not touch on the actual labor conditions of Koreans.
A Fukuoka Photograph Used for “Battleship Island Wartime Laborers”
Yonhap News TV reported on the wartime labor of Koreans on Battleship Island（from Yonhap News TV）.
At that time, as material showing the harsh working environment of Koreans on Battleship Island, they broadcast the same photograph of two workers operating equipment in a mine tunnel.
In the Yonhap program, the anchor stated, “So many pieces of evidence remain, as you can see.”
However, it was discovered that this photograph is included in the “Fifty-Year History” published in 1935 by the Chikuho Coal Mining Association, formed by coal companies in the Chikuho district of Fukuoka.
The National Requisition Ordinance, based on the National Mobilization Law for the purpose of securing labor during wartime, was enacted in July 1939.
Because this was before requisition began, the two people in the photograph have nothing to do with requisition.
In recent years, the misuse of photographs has repeatedly occurred in South Korea, and Professor Munehiro Miwa of Kyushu University, who is knowledgeable about the wartime labor issue, views it this way: “At the time, the Hashima Coal Mine used state-of-the-art equipment, and there were no photographs that would evoke the ‘poor working environment’ claimed by the Korean side.
That is probably why the Korean media jumped at this photograph.”
In response to written questions from the Sankei Shimbun, a Yonhap official explained that “whether it was shown during the program or not, we did not provide explanations one by one” regarding the photograph, and claimed that the photograph was not related to the content of the broadcast.
JTBC did not respond by the deadline.