A spokesperson of the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families issued the following press statement titled “Japanese imperialists’ unethical atrocities against Korean people will be surely counted” on March 9:

Nearly 80 years have passed since Korea was liberated from the barbarous colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists. But the bloody shouts of the souls of the people who were taken to alien lands by the Japanese imperialists’ abduction and died rancorous are still resounding vigorously.

After annexing Korea by force of arms in the last century, the Japanese imperialists committed unheard-of unethical crimes. Among the atrocities clearly recorded in the crime-woven history are the historical facts that the Japanese imperialists forcibly took away more than 8.4 million young and middle-aged Koreans and drove them out to the aggressive battle fields and toilsome worksites as bullet shields and labour slaves and made them undergo the wholesale deaths in the large-scale air raids by the US forces.

Hundreds of B-29 large bombers of the US forces flew into the sky over Tokyo and Osaka of Japan on March 10 and 13, 1945, towards the end of the Pacific War ignited by the Japanese imperialists, made massive air raids while dropping incendiaries and other bombs at random.

At that time the Japanese imperialists kept Koreans in custody in groups, claiming that Koreans who had been subjected to subhuman maltreatment and humiliation, dangerous and toilsome labour could escape in the confusion of air raids. As a result, many Koreans died an accidental death.

According to “Study of War Responsibilities” No. 53, the organ of the Japanese Data Center for War Responsibilities, on the damage of Korean people in the large-scale air raids on Tokyo, the war victims are 41 300 and the death toll will far exceed 10 000.

Immediately after the large-scale air raids, the Japanese imperialists buried the Koreans dead in 67 places of parks, temples and campuses, not investigating their identity, under the pretext of the “emperor’s” junket to the area. Later, they committed such hideous unethical crimes as digging out the dead and dealing with the remains of Koreans at will.

The Korean victims did not return to their native places where their beloved parents, wives and children were waiting for even after their death and became the fate of forlorn wandering spirits in alien lands. This miserable fate is entirely attributable to the Japanese imperialists' occupation of Korea and their colonial rule over it, and a direct product of the abduction of Koreans.

Nevertheless, the successive Japanese authorities have never paid attention to probing the unethical atrocities at that time and confirming the identity of the Korean victims without any slightest compunction, and have made desperate efforts to bury the forcible drafting in the oblivion of history.

Japan formulated it as a governmental stand that forcible drafting of Koreans should not be expressed with “forced labour.” And it has issued the guidelines on noting the “forcible drafting” as “mobilization” and “labour draft” in history textbooks, rubbing salt into the unhealed wounds of the victims and bereaved families.

Japan should bear in mind that its moves to obliterate its past aggressive crimes and implant its distorted outlook on history into the younger generation, evading its state responsibility for the crimes against humanity, will only add to the debt of its crimes, remaining a shameless country bereft of human ethics and morality in the international community.

The forcible drafting and forcible labour of Koreans are crimes committed by the government and military of Imperial Japan with all authority involved, and they are the crime against important ethics and morality, slavery crime and war crime. The international conventional law and statute law on legal prescription stipulate that no prescription applies to the crimes related to basic human rights.

Japan, a war criminal state, should make a full investigation into the fact that the remains of Korean victims have been left neglected for 80 years and open to the public the truth. At the same time Japan should make a thorough apology and reparation to the victims and their bereaved families for the thrice-cursed crimes of pushing innocent people into death.

It is the unshakable will of all the Korean people to certainly give vent to the deep-rooted grudge of the victims who lost their flowery youth and precious lives due to the forcible drafting by the Japanese imperialists and of their bereaved families.

The unethical atrocities committed by the Japanese imperialists against the Korean people during the air raids on Tokyo and Osaka by the US forces will be surely counted.

KCNA