A spokesperson of the Association of Korean Victims of Forcible Drafting and Their Bereaved Families issued a press statement titled "Japanese Imperialists' Unethical Atrocities against Korean People Will Be Surely Counted" on March 9.

The press statement said after annexing Korea by force of arms in the last century, the Japanese imperialists committed unheard-of unethical crimes, and continued.

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 for bullet shields and labor slaves and made them undergo the wholesale deaths in the large-scale air raids by the US forces.

During the air raids on Tokyo and Osaka of Japan on March 10 and 13, 1945, the end of the Pacific War, the Japanese imperialists kept Koreans in custody in groups, claiming that Koreans who had been subjected to subhuman maltreatment and humiliation, dangerous and toilsome labor 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 Korean 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.

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 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.

Japan, a war criminal state, should make 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 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.

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, the press statement stressed.