A spokesperson for the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families issued the following press statement entitled "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 hot-blooded outcries of the souls of those who were forcibly abducted to alien lands by the Japanese imperialists and died without satisfying their grudge are still resounding.

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 theatres of war of aggression and sites of hard labour 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, the closing period of the Pacific War started by Japan, and 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, contempt and dangerous and backbreaking labour, could escape in the confusion of air raids. As a result, many Koreans died grievous deaths.

According to "Study of War Responsibilities" No. 53, the organ of the Japanese Data Center for War Responsibilities, on the damage suffered by Koreans in the large-scale air raids on Tokyo, the war victims would amount to 41 300 and the death toll would far exceed 10 000.

Immediately after the air raids, the Japanese imperialists buried the corpses of Korean victims in 67 places of parks, temples and campuses, without confirming their identity, on the pretext of the "emperor's" junket to the area. Later, they committed such heinous unethical crimes as digging out the remains of the Koreans and dealing with them at will.

The Korean victims failed to return to their native places where their beloved parents, wives and children were waiting for them even after their death and suffered the fate of forlorn wandering spirits in the alien land. Such 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 then unethical atrocities and confirming the identity of the Korean victims without the slightest compunction, but have made desperate attempts to bury the forcible drafting into oblivion of history.

Japan formulated it as a government stand that forcible drafting of Koreans should not be expressed as "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 their bereaved families.

Japan should bear in mind that its moves to erase its past records of aggression and implant the distorted outlook on history into the younger generations, evading its state responsibility for the unethical crimes, will only add to the heap of its crimes, remaining as a shameless country bereft of human ethics and morality in the eyes of the international community.

The forcible drafting and forced labour of Koreans are crimes committed by the government and military of Imperial Japan by using all authority and constitute a crime against important ethics and morality, slavery crime and war crime. The international common and statute laws on legal prescription stipulate that no statute of limitations applies to the crimes related to basic human rights.

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

It is the unshakable will of all the Korean people to satisfy the deep-rooted grudge of the victims, who were deprived of their bloom of 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.