Japan mulls delaying controversial Sado mine list for World Heritage

UNESCO's World Heritage Committee last year adopted a resolution stating that Japan has failed to provide a sufficient explanation regarding the Korean victims of wartime forced labor at the Hashima Coal Mine off Nagasaki.

Gunkanjima has many amazing sights and should be memorialized. How about balancing it out by having the companies who benefited from forced labor, some prominent names in Japan Inc. and connected to LDP bigwigs like Aso and Abe, responsible for full disclosure and compensation?

Japan attempting to whitewash everything in order to save face. What's wrong? Can't face reality like Germany? Or not adult enough to own up to your mistakes? Root cause of all this is Japan's tatamae culture.

Went on vacation to Sado Isle about 10yrs ago. Lovely, very quiet place during summer with some nice beaches. We visited the mine (Kinzan) which is now a museum. As a museum, it's quite interesting. I researched a little before going and learned that Koreans, Chinese, even Japanese criminals and political dissidents were jailed at Kinzan and underwent forced labour. Mines are dangerous places to work so you can imagine how bad it was for those people.

There is no official record of how many prisoners died there. Some say 2,000 others 5,000 others even more. The reason being, those records seem to have miraculously disappeared. There wasn't even one display, a plaque, memorial to inform visitors of the thousands of prisoners who died there mining gold under horrendous conditions. It's like those people never existed. We all know what Japanese POW camps were like. Kinzan was no different.

It doesn't surprise me that Japan is trying to get KInzan, a place of death, torture, abuse, and despair, turned into a UNESCO World Heritage site. Talk about the irony. Talk about the usual Japanese whitewashing and refusal to accept their past.

Yes it should be a world Heritage site, like a concentration camp in Europe, a site of misery, cruelty.

It's not surprising to see right wing, ignorant and misinformed Japanese represented on this site giving minuses to any criticism of their past like Kinzan on Sado Isle. They're too scared to express their opinions to your face but on the internet they thrive under anonymity.

Root cause of all this is Japan's tatamae culture.

Spot on. The chasm between the Germans and the Japanese is enormous. It will never change.

The Japanese government seems to view these locations associated to slave labor and torture as places to be marveled and celebrated.

Japan showing its true colors again

Japan attempting to whitewash everything in order to save face. What's wrong? Can't face reality like Germany? Or not adult enough to own up to your mistakes? Root cause of all this is Japan's tatamae culture.

exactly

The Japanese government seems to view these locations associated to slave labor and torture as places to be marveled and celebrated.

Yes. Extremely troubling.

Hey, we're not all like that. I despise the right wing and am ashamed of my country's colonial history.

I fully support any Korean opposition to this plan.

Deep respect to you Thomas

These UNESCO heritage sites are a marketing scam

It doesn't surprise me that Japan is trying to get KInzan, a place of death, torture, abuse, and despair, turned into a UNESCO World Heritage site. Talk about the irony. Talk about the usual Japanese whitewashing and refusal to accept their past.

Yes it is not surprising, given that the people who founded the LDP were war criminals restored to power by the US.

In this regard it isn't so much that they are attempting to whitewash, more like they are trying to legitimate their past in the eyes of others.

Cheers my friend. I always respect you and your posts on this site. You speak sense and come across as a good, caring person!!

Thanks bro!

Yes it is not surprising, given that the people who founded the LDP were war criminals restored to power by the US.

Yup! Abe's Grandfather Kishi used CIA slush funds and Yakuza money to build the LDP

Talk about the usual Japanese whitewashing and refusal to accept their past.

Well of course! The Kempeitai Japan's Gestapo and Tokkō  Japan's **Thought Police** became the Mombusho or the Ministry of Education.

The upper eschalons of power in Japan are a horrific cesspool

Expat.....

No site that used slave labor of any type should be a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That in and of itself should be a disqualifier, unless it is the fate of the enslaved being memorialized.

Auschwitz is a UNESCO World Heritage site. But I don't think Japan wants its old gold mines to have this kind of heritage.

Tom Doley...

Can't face reality like Germany? Or not adult enough to own up to your mistakes? Root cause of all this is Japan's tatamae culture.

There's that and the fact that many in power now are the grand children and great grandchildren of those in powerful positions at the time of these crimes.

Thomas GoodtimeToday  03:08 pm JST

@MilesTeg

Hey, we're not all like that. I despise the right wing and am ashamed of my country's colonial history.

I fully support any Korean opposition to this plan.

Hey Thomas Goodtime! Apologies if I implied that all Japanese are like that. I know there are many who are capable of critical thinking and who acknowledge your country's past.

It's the same in every country. We all have our shame. As a Canadian, it sickens me that we stole everything they had and put Japanese Canadian citizens in internment camps during WWII. That our government and the catholic church were responsible for the sexual, physical, and mental abuse and murder of thousands of native children. We can deny or forget these incidents.

Korean opposition again?

Some folks would have you believe that anything ever built between 1939 - 1945 was by Korean "slaves" and that not a single one of them willingly signed up to work or was paid for working in the mines, in the factories, in the fields, etc.

rolls eyes