THEY WERE LEFT TO ROT. Now, a new search for their bodies has hit a dead end.
A diver sank into the pitch-black, flooded depths of a Japanese coal mine this week. FOR THREE HOURS, they scoured the watery grave where 183 people—including 136 Koreans forced into labor by Imperial Japan—drowned in a 1942 flooding disaster. They found NOTHING. Yonhap photos show the grim, silent operation emerging empty-handed.
Officials blamed equipment failure and near-zero visibility. But the failure is DEEPER. This is the latest chapter in an eight-decade-long saga of neglect. The victims were conscripted laborers, their bodies never recovered, their stories buried with them. Now, international divers from Finland, Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan are being brought in for a last-ditch effort next week. Why has it taken so long? Why is the search so fraught?
A memorial ceremony will be held this Saturday. But flowers and speeches are a cold comfort when the evidence of the crime remains LOST IN THE DARK. Japan’s wartime past is a ghost that refuses to be laid to rest, and powerful forces would rather it stay that way. The silence from Tokyo is DEAFENING.
They dragged them into that hellhole alive, and now they can’t even bring them home dead.
Edited for Kayitsi.com
Author: Kayitsi.com
