by NAM SANG-GU
Refusal to acknowledge forced labor at industrial heritage sites breaks vow to UN body and defies the zeitgeist
At a time when statues representing histories of slavery, racism and colonialism are being toppled across the United States and worldwide, Japan is moving in the opposite direction.
It has – this very month – opened a new historical center that completely ignores historical crimes. These crimes are widely known: The mobilization of countless Chinese, Koreans and Allied prisoners of war to work as forced labor during World War II.
It’s a shame. The opening of Japan’s industrial heritage center in mid-June should have been cause for celebration, for it details how the country created an industrial base – the first Asian nation to do so and a global benchmark for modernization.
Instead, it demonstrates that Tokyo is attempting to whitewash its aggressions in the first half of the 20th century. And remarkably, this whitewash negates promises made to a major UN body.
Meiji and UNESCO
On July 5, 2015, 23 sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution related to iron, steel, shipbuilding and coal mining were designated World Heritage Sites by the World Heritage Committee (WHC) of UNESCO.
At the time, the WHC recommended that Japan prepare “an interpretive strategy” to enable a full understanding of the history of each site. Tokyo accepted this advice and pledged to take measures “to enable the understanding that a large number of Koreans and others were mobilized against their will and forced to work.”
What the Japanese government acknowledged at the time was hardly the fruit of new research. The material is, in fact, included in textbooks for elementary, middle and high school students in Japan.
In the five years since making its pledge, however, the Japanese government has reneged on its promise.
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