What is it about?
In the late 1960s, Fukagawa Munetoshi began to investigate what happened to a group of Korean forced labourers who disapppeared a month after the end of World War II. They had worked under him at Mitsubishi’s Hiroshima Shipyard. His account presents a complex picture of the working class in Japan during wartime and the immediate postwar period, as well as the Japanese colonial system for obtaining forced labour from Korea. Fukagawa’s story draws on his experience as a former Mitsubishi employee and atomic bomb survivor, and also his cultural awareness and criticism of Japanese chauvinism.
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Why is it important?
Fukagawa’s investigation and the story he related later raises serious questions about the responsibilities, past and present, of Japanese authorities in government and big business toward wartime Korean forced labourers. His account provides an alternative view of the Hiroshima atomic bombing through the perspective of a group of Korean hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) who did not see themselves at that time as “victims” of American military might, but of Japanese military conquest and occupation, even though the subsequent destructive health effects of radiation sickness changed their view in later decades.
Perspectives
The problem of acknowledgement of historical injustices to Koreans used as forced labor by the Japanese government and companies, including giant zaibatsu like Mitsubishi, remains largely unresolved today. Litigations on behalf of these Koreans continues in South Korean courts, while Japanese courts have refused compensation for unpaid wages. Many Japanese activists, such as Fukagawa - a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor - have sought to change this attitude in Japan. Their historical accounts, and new ones emerging, have a contemporary importance far beyond "academia" and impact directly on the future of Korean / Japanese relations.
Dr David Palmer
University of Melbourne
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Straits of Dead Souls: One Man's Investigation into the Disappearance of Mitsubishi Hiroshima's Korean Forced Labourers, Japanese Studies, December 2006, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/10371390600986702.
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