The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 4 | Issue 8 | Article ID 2187 | Aug 14, 2006

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NHK's Finest Hour: Japan's Official Record of Chinese ForcedLabor

William Underwood

NHK’s Finest Hour: Japan’s Official Recordof Chinese Forced Labor

By William Underwood

May 3, 1960:

“We have heard that in March of Showa 21[1946], the directorate of the Ministry ofForeign Affairs [MOFA] compiled such aninvestigative record. However, it was thoughtthat if the documents were used for war crimesprosecutions they would cause trouble to agreat many people. Therefore, all of thedocuments were burned and MOFA does notnow possess even a portion of the documents.”

--Diet remarks by the chief of MOFA’s AsiaBureau during questioning by the Lower HouseSpecial Committee on the Japan-U.S. SecurityTreaty. The decision to deceive parliamentabout records describing Chinese forced laborin Japan had been reached six weeks earlier, onMarch 17, and the false story would berepeated on multiple occasions. KishiNobusuke, prime minister at the time, hadserved as the wartime czar of forced laboroperations and been imprisoned as a Class Awar crimes suspect from 1945-48.[1]

May 11, 1993:

“We have been hearing that MOFA compiled aninvestigative report in March of Showa 21[1946]. Since that report does not now exist,however, we cannot say anything withcertainty. … Regarding the existence ofdocuments like that, MOFA has employedvarious means and done all it can. However, we

have answered in the Diet in the past that suchdocuments no longer remain, and the presentsituation has not changed. We are sorry to keeprepeating ourselves, but I must state once morethat the records are not here.”

--Diet remarks by the chief of the regionalpolicy section of MOFA’s Asia Bureau, duringquestioning by the Upper House WelfareCommittee.[2]

May 17, 1993:

NHK is Japan’s influential public broadcastingnetwork. NHK’s nightly TV program, “Close UpGendai,” introduces the Japanese public to thefive-volume, 646-page Foreign Ministry Reportand related documents about Chinese forcedlabor (CFL). The records confirm that 38,935Chinese males between the ages of 11 and 78were brought to Japan against their will in1943-45. They performed harsh, unpaidphysical labor at 135 mines, docks andconstruction sites from Kyushu to Hokkaido.The overall fatality rate was 17.5 percent, morethan one in six, but at some sites half of allworkers perished.

August 14, 1993:

An hour-long NHK Special called “The PhantomForeign Ministry Report: The Record ofChinese Forced Labor” is broadcast on nationaltelevision. The network interviewed dozens ofpeople in Japan, China and the United States,while conducting the first research usingprimary CFL records. These included theForeign Ministry Report, Site Reports andpreviously unknown Investigator Reports. NHK

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Publishing produced a 244-page book with thesame title in 1994.[3]

July 18, 2003:

“We knew that these reports were kept in thebasement storeroom, but we were not able toconfirm that they were the reports submittedby individual companies. We deeply regret notmaking thorough investigations.”

--Public statement by MOFA’s China andMongolia Division, following discovery of morethan 100 Site Reports detailing all aspects ofChinese forced labor. The reports weresubmitted to MOFA in 1946 by the 35 Japanesecorporations that used Chinese workers. Twodozen companies remain in business today.[4]

August 26, 2003:

“Regarding the matter of so-called Chineseforced labor, it is extremely regrettable thatamid abnormal wartime conditions manyChinese people came to Japan in a half-forciblemanner and endured many hardships due tosevere work.”

--Written statement to the Diet by PrimeMinister Koizumi Junichiro [5]

These days, NHK’s programming schedule islong on nature programs and favorablecoverage of the imperial family. The problem ofJapanese abducted by North Korea also getsplenty of air time, while shows highlightingJapan’s atomic victimization have become anAugust ritual. The reputation of NHK as themedia entity least likely to challenge thenation’s conservative government wascemented last year, amid revelations that thepublic broadcaster had bowed to politicalpressure in sanitizing a 2001 program aboutmilitary sexual slavery.[6]

The very future of NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai, or

the Japan Broadcasting Corp.) has grownunclear. A string of fraud and embezzlementscandals has led 30 percent of households towithhold payment of the mandatory viewer feesthat fund the 56-year-old organization. NHK’sown reform plans include steep staff cuts, whilea government panel has recommendedeliminating some of the eight television andradio channels. The network’s annual budgetrequires Diet approval.

NHK and its attitude toward Japanese warresponsibility were far different in 1993.During the May 17 broadcast of its “Close UpGendai” program, NHK exhibited the long-suppressed “Foreign Ministry Report” (FMR)that details the brutal wartime system ofChinese forced labor operated by the state andprivate companies. Parliament soon took up thematter and Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichiexpressed his deep regret. The Ministry ofForeign Affairs (MOFA) would comparetypesets and analyze writing styles for a yearbefore acknowledging that the FMR in NHK’spossession was the same document it hadproduced in 1946.

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Video cover for August 1993 NHK Special

On August 1, 1993, NHK ran a televisiondocumentary about wartime labor conscriptioninvolving hundreds of thousands of Koreans,based on name lists made public by the WelfareMinistry. The program was ent i t led,“Investigative Report: Korean Forced Labor.”Then on August 4, Chief Cabinet SecretaryKono Yohei admitted for the first time theforcible nature of the so-called “comfortwomen” system and the Japanese military’scentral role in it.

Kono extended the government’s “sincereapologies and remorse to all those, irrespectiveof place of origin, who suffered immeasurablepain and incurable physical and psychologicalwounds as comfort women.” Kono alsopromised to “face squarely the historical factsas described above instead of evading them.”However, the Japanese government failed toissue a formal apology or to establish agovernment fund to provide reparations forvictims. The Asian Women’s Fund established

in 1995 was a private fund that left mostvictims deeply dissatisfied at the failure of theJ a p a n e s e g o v e r n m e n t t o a c c e p tresponsibil ity.[7]

(In an indication of how far Japan hasregressed since the mid-1990s regardingresponsibility for military sexual slavery, theDaily Yomiuri’s startling editorial on Feb. 6,2005, was entitled “Asian Women’s Fund Basedon Distortions.” The Yomiuri attacked “Kono’spatently false statement” of a decade earlierand blamed it for creating “the mistakenperception both at home and abroad that thewomen who worked at brothels had beenforced to do so by the Imperial Army afterbeing forcibly transported to such facilities forsexual servitude.”)[8]

On August 9, 1993, Hosokawa Morihiro becamethe first non-LDP prime minister in 38 yearsand, in his inaugural press conference, statedhis belief that Japan had waged “a war ofaggression, a war that was wrong.” This ratherself-evident observation was unprecedented fora Japanese leader, although during theremainder of his brief tenure Hosokawa wouldrefer more discreetly to a war that hadincluded “aggressive acts.”

(A group of LDP Diet members began meetinga few days later in reaction to Hosokawa’sstatement, which helped galvanize the forces ofnationalism and historical revisionism that havesince become prominent. An account of theperiod on the Liberal Democratic Party’swebsite refers to “notable mishaps includingPrime Minister Hosokawa's widely-criticizedassertion at a press conference that Japan hadacted as an aggressor in the Second World War(Nihon no shinryaku senso).”[9]

Then on August 14, 1993, capping a self-searching fortnight in terms of accountabilityfor Japan’s war conduct, NHK aired aremarkable hour-long television documentarycalled “The Phantom Foreign Ministry Report:

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The Record of Chinese Forced Labor.” TheNHK Special was awarded the top prize at the1993 Asia TV Broadcasting Festival, while a244-page book of the same title was put out byNHK Publishers in 1994.

Taken together, the documentary and the booklikely represent the most aggressiveinvestigation in the network’s history. In amanner scarcely imaginable today, NHKunflinchingly educated the Japanese publicabout a major, nearly forgotten war crime. In abook subsection called “Ongoing Evasion ofResponsibility by the Government andCorporations,” NHK openly called for redressfor Chinese victims. A survey of the two dozenJapanese corporations still in business wasconducted, asking them if they felt responsiblefor the deaths at their worksites and if theyplanned to apologize and pay compensation.

DECADE OF REGRESS

The contemporary reparations movement forChinese forced labor (CFL), with roots inJapanese society stretching back to the late1940s, has unfolded fitfully since it reemergedtwo decades ago. In 1989, survivors of KajimaCorp.’s notorious Hanaoka construction site,where 418 out of 986 workers died and a late-war uprising and massacre took place,demanded a public apology, compensation andestablishment of a memorial museum. Kajimadid apologize in 1990 but then dug in itscorporate heels; the “community relief fund”finally set up in 2000 lacked any admission ofwrongdoing. Yet the 14 CFL lawsuits filednationwide have been notably successful, atleast by Japan’s inhospitable judicial standards,with four major victories for plaintiffs so far.

The Tokyo District Court in July 2001 orderedthe state to compensate the family of LiuLianren, who escaped from a Hokkaido mine in1945 and hid in the mountains until 1958. TheFukuoka District Court ordered Mitsui Corp. topay compensation in another case in April

2002, while the Hiroshima High Court orderedNishimatsu Corp. to do likewise in July 2004.Those three cases are now before the JapanSupreme Court. The Niigata District Courtfound both the state and Rinko Corp. liable fordamages in March 2004.

Japanese judges at both the district andappeals court levels, in fact, routinely find thatthe Japanese government and privatecompanies jointly engaged in illegal conduct byforcibly bringing plaintiffs to Japan and forcingthem to work here. This has established a vitalhistorical record, even though most claims areultimately rejected (as at the Tokyo High Courton June 16) on the grounds of state immunityand a 20-year time limit for filing lawsuits.Judges occasionally (as at the Nagano DistrictCourt last March) express their personaldesires that victims be redressed through non-judicial means.

But Mitsubishi Materials Corp., successor tothe mining arm of the zaibatsu that was Japan’stop munitions producer, is currently embarkedon a bold defense strategy based on revisionisthistorical arguments. In a recent lawsuit beforethe Fukuoka District Court involving a coalmine where one out of every four workers died,Mitsubishi lawyers denied all charges of forcedlabor, questioned whether Japan ever“invaded” China, and warned that a “mistakenburden of the soul” would result from courtfindings that forced labor occurred.

Mitsubishi attorneys have told the MiyazakiDistrict Court, in reference to a copper minewhere the 31 percent death toll was double thenational average, “Conditions at our worksitewere in no way any worse than those in Chinaat the time.”[10] At the Nagasaki DistrictCourt, Mitsubishi has claimed that theoperat ions of the North China LaborAssociation, the collaborationist Beijing agencythat will be discussed below, were notinfluenced by the Japanese military occupation.

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The story behind Mitsubishi’s determinedcampaign of denial regarding Chinese forcedlabor involves systematic Kyushu-basedattempts to whitewash the far larger wartimesystem of Korean labor conscription by denyingthat any coercion or violence was involved.“The Truth and Glory of the Coal Mines: TheFabrication of Korean Forced Labor,” a 108-page book with tables and photographs writtenusing a middle-school language level, waspublished in December 2005 by the Chikuhochapter o f the Nippon Ka ig i ( JapanConference).[11]

Nippon Kaigi is a well-funded group ofinfluential Diet members, business leaders,academics and citizens with a stronglynationalistic agenda. The decade-old lobbyingorganization is said to have 50,000 dues-payingmembers and millions more supporters whoespouse the Shinto religion and other Japanesetraditions.[12] Focusing on the rich mininghistory of the Chikuho region of Kyushu, oncethe backbone of Japan’s coal industry, the newNippon Kaigi book is apparently intended as asupplemental teaching resource.

Researchers supporting reparations,meanwhile, have joined what they describe as apitched battle for control of the historicalnarrative of mining by both Koreans andChinese in Chikuho. Kyushu courtrooms andboards of education have become theintertwined battlegrounds. If the sanitizedversion of mining history takes root locally, itcould spread nationwide and spill over intoother industrial sectors that used forced laborextensively. A recent field trip to old mine sites,meant to help counter the revisionist trend,was attended by 30 area residents—and a pairof suspicious strangers possibly connected tothe Nippon Kaigi effort.

Reparations backers further claim thatattempts to “restore pride” in Chikuho byeliminating all vestiges of forced labor from thenarrative are being spearheaded by former

executives of Mitsubishi Materials and AsoMining Corp., once the family firm of Japan’scurrent foreign minister and prime ministerialcandidate, Aso Taro. The frontrunner tobecome the next prime minister, Chief CabinetSecretary Abe Shinzo, is the grandson of KishiNobusuke, who had served as the bureaucraticoverseer of all forced labor programs beforeheading the cover up of Chinese forced labor asprime minister from 1957-60. Both Aso and Abemaintain close connections to Nippon Kaigi,although since joining the cabinet they are nolonger formal members.

Satani Masayuki, author of “The Truth andGlory of the Coal Mines,” is a retired front-office employee of Mitsubishi’s coal divisionand a member of the Japanese Society forHistory Textbook Reform, or Tsukurukai, thenational group behind controversial textbooksthat downplay and at times deny Japanese warmisconduct and atrocities. Satani previouslyself-published a book called, “Wake Up fromthe Brainwashing of the Tokyo Trials View ofHistory.” The editor of “Truth and Glory” is aformer head of the municipal history museumin Iizuka, Chikuho’s main city, and co-author of“The 100-Year History of Aso Mining.”

Chinese woman with her father’s remains(NHK Special)

By stark contrast, the German and Austrian

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governments and companies that used forcedlabor during the Nazi era, under powerful U.S.pressure, recently completed reparationsprograms granting formal apologies andmonetary payments of more than six billiondollars to nearly two million former workers orfamily members. Educational programs are akey element of European redress activities andforced labor memorial museums have beenbuilt.

Germany agreed in April 2006 to make publicup to 50 million documents from Nazi archivesregarding the personal fates of 17 millionvictims of forced labor and the Holocaust.[13]Whereas this major archives release isexpected to greatly facilitate understanding offorced labor across Europe, Japan’s trackrecord has been to stubbornly suppressvirtually all information about forced labor andother war crimes in Asia. To be sure, there areno top-level German government officials withsuch deep family ties to forced labor and noindustry-affiliated groups attempting tominimize or deny the historical reality, makingit easier for the German government to complywith demands to open the archives.

In short, current Japanese attitudes towardforced labor reparations are vastly differentfrom might have been expected to result fromthe 1993 broadcast and 1994 publication ofNHK’s “The Phantom Foreign Ministry Report.”The remainder of this article will consider thecompelling record of Chinese forced labor aslaid out by NHK, ranging from Interior Ministrydirectives to harshly mistreat workers toHokkaido police instructions to falsify deathcertificates and the postwar government’sdeliberate deception of the Diet.

The records produced—and then concealed—bythe state and industry try to shift blame for thehigh fatality rates to one another and to theChinese themselves, while displaying thevirulent racism that was intrinsic to theprogram. While some conscientious Japanese

pursued CFL accountability and ensured thatrecords were not lost forever, joint state-corporate moves to evade responsibilitypredated the “reverse course” phase of theAmerican Occupation that aimed to rehabilitateJapanese industry and political conservatives.From August 1945 down to the present day,NHK showed, the Japanese establishment hasbeen consistently duplicitous in denying andrefusing to come to terms with the legacy ofChinese forced labor.

PAPER TRAIL REDISCOVERED

The secret compilation of the massive“Investigative Report on Working Conditions ofChinese Labor,” or Foreign Ministry Report(FMR), amid the domestic chaos of early 1946was a marvel of organizational efficiency. Theprocess highlighted the strong continuity ofJapan’s wartime and immediate postwarinstitutions of government and economicproduction, and of the interactions betweenthem. Indeed, it would be difficult to point toany other project of similar scope andsensitivity that was carried out without theknowledge of GHQ during this criticaltransitional period.

Fearing war crimes prosecutions by thevictorious Allied coalition that included theNationalist Chinese government, the Ministryof Foreign Affairs (MOFA) sent a total of 16investigators to all 135 forced labor worksitesbeginning in March 1946, while simultaneouslyinstructing the 35 corporations to submitinformation directly to the ministry. Thisprocess resulted in the relatively truthfulInvestigator Reports as well as the more self-serving Site Reports, with the FMR then beingcompiled mainly from the Site Reports as apotential tool for state and corporate self-defense. The purpose of the exercise was toportray Chinese forced labor in the bestpossible light before Occupation authoritiescould undertake their own investigation. That isapparently why the FMR bears the date of

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March 1946 despite being completed early thatsummer.

The Foreign Ministry Report lists the names ofall 38,935 Chinese males, aged 11-78, whowere brought to Japan between 1943 and 1945,as well as causes of death for the 6,830 men(17.5 percent) who perished in the course ofperforming harsh labor at mines, docks andconstruction sites. Details include hometowns,occupations, next of kin, methods ofprocurement, location and duration ofdetention in North China, ports of departurefrom China and arrival in Japan, and names ofships. Circumstances of food, clothing, housing,work and supervision at company sites aredescribed, along with accounts of disturbancesand postwar repatriation to China. Amid thetables and statistics is MOFA’s conclusion thatthe program was a huge financial burden oncorporations and failed to alleviate Japan’smanpower crisis as intended. [14]

An NHK producer was discreetly informedabout the voluminous record of Chinese forcedlabor in early 1993. The Foreign MinistryReport, Site Reports and Investigator Reportsthat the network revealed to the nation duringthe May 17 news show and the August 14documentary were obtained from two majorsources: Chen Kunwang of the Tokyo branch ofthe Overseas Chinese Association (OCA) andO t o m o F u k u o , o n e o f t h e 1 6 M O F Ainvestigators dispatched to worksites.

The Taiwan-born Chen had come to Japan in1941 to study law at Chuo University,becoming vice-president of the Tokyo OCA in1950. Chen told NHK that someone connectedto MOFA (presumably Otomo) secretly gavehim the FMR and most of the Site Reports via amiddleman in the early 1950s, after disobeyingorders to destroy the records in order topreserve the truth about CFL. The bulkyreports were handed over in installments usingrucksacks, during rendezvous in coffee shops.The OCA’s Ginza office was deemed an unsafe

storage place for top-secret governmentdocuments, especially since the group wasconsidered an informal representative ofBeijing during much of the Cold War. So keysections of the reports were microfilmed andeverything was stored off-site in cardboardapple boxes. Chen delivered the yellowed 47-year-old materials to NHK’s Shibuya officeusing a station wagon.

Chen Kunwang with records he hid for decades(NHK Special)

In 1955, in fact, Chen had publicly stated thatthe Overseas Chinese Association possessedthe records, during an earlier phase of the CFLreparations movement when the main goalsw e r e t o e r e c t m e m o r i a l s a n d h o l dcommemorations, while excavating remains ofvictims and returning them to China. Chen toldNHK he even allowed the Japanese Red CrossSociety to make a copy of the FMR, in anunsuccessful attempt to enlist the group’s helpin pursuing state responsibility for CFL as acrime under international law. The Japan RedCross eventually provided limited cooperationin repatriating Chinese bones.

Individual Site Reports, containing sensitiveinformation such as the names of Japanese staffwho supervised forced labor, were sometimeswielded by the OCA to browbeat recalcitrantcompanies into handing over remains. Chen

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recounted how one corporation denied thatremains in its possession were of Chineseorigin at all—until he dropped a Site Report,complete with the personal seals of seniormanagement, on the office table. The companylater reportedly complained to MOFA thatinformation it had been promised would remainconfidential was in the hands of reparationsactivists. Even during the decades when theirexistence was officially denied, the reportsplayed an instrumental role in the pursuit ofaccountability for Chinese forced labor.

NHK learned about Otomo Fukuo throughinternal MOFA documents discovered byJapanese redress activists at the U.S. NationalArchives, referring to the ministry’s early 1946appointment of CFL site inspectors and fundingof the investigation. Otomo was 79 years oldwhen NHK tracked him down and received asecond FMR and a large cache of unusuallyreliable Investigator Reports, a class of recordsthat not even the OCA had realized existed.Starting mostly with surnames only, NHKmanaged to identify the 16 investigators half acentury later and interviewed several of them.

Not regular ministry employees, theinvestigators contracted for the FMR job hadworked in wartime China as analysts foragencies like the government’s East AsiaResearch Institute and some went on topostwar careers in academia, in Otomo’s caseas a Senshu University economics professorspecializing in labor issues. Several of thosewho fanned out to worksites were apparentlyprogressives, evidenced by the fact that theInvestigator Reports establish patterns ofcruelty and mistreatment omitted by thecompany-produced Site Reports and the finalFMR. Otomo visited seven sites, observingconditions that differed greatly from companydescriptions and interviewing locals who toldhim that the miserable living standards weregood enough for Chinese.

The inspector sent to Mitsui Corp.’s Miike coal

mine recalled for NHK that his red-carpettreatment included being plied with alcoholduring the afternoon, adding that he believedMitsui officials were deceiving him to hide theirwar crimes. After a month of inspections in thehinterlands the investigators returned to Tokyoand began compiling their more objectivereports, even as trusted MOFA officials wereindependently writing up the FMR based oncompany Site Reports and the extensive CFLrecords the state already had. The dispatch ofthe contract investigators may have been adiversionary tactic intended to placate GHQand the Chinese government in the event ofwar crimes prosecutions.

As Otomo explained, “The Foreign MinistryReport was meant to be given to foreigners likethe Chinese if questions arose, so the purposewas to show that there was no extreme crueltyat all. Severe cases of abuse were depicted ascontrary to government policy and the result ofmisguided personal actions by worksite staff.Basically, it was a self-defense document.Nevetheless, the report contains factualinformation about the forced labor system andhow it was carried out. It accurately tells whatkind of Chinese were brought to Japan, as wellas where and how they died. So despite itslimitations, the report is certainly an extremelyvaluable document.”[15]

NHK’s production team went far beyondpassive reliance on the FMR in rushing tocomplete the documentary by August 1993.Crews filmed interviews in Japan, China andthe United States, while staff researcherspored over the three types of reports lookingfor discrepancies. Meetings with localmuseums, corporate historians and labor unionarchivists helped narrow the focus to threeworksites: two Hokkaido coal mines andFurukawa Mining Corp.’s Ashio copper mine inTochigi Prefecture. NHK was undeterred byinitial refusals to cooperate with the projectand determined to avoid fuzzy euphemisms intelling viewers about the historical reality.

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“We decided at the beginning that we wouldabsolutely avoid concealing the identities ofinterviewees,” the NHK book related. “Still anunresolved issue after half a century, Chineseforced labor was a serious and sensitiveproblem for Sino-Japanese relations. That wasprecisely why we did not want to useambiguous descriptions. We sincerelyexplained to the people involved that wewanted to accurately convey the facts andcontinued persuading them to cooperate.”[16]

NORTH CHINA CONTEXT

Construction and mining industry organizationsapproached the government regarding the“internal importation” (naichi inyu) of Chineseworkers beginning in 1939, refining theconcept in an August 1941 position paper. Withdomestic heavy labor shortages becomingevermore critical, the state turned thiscorporate vision into administrative reality intwo steps: the November 1942 “cabinetresolution” that led to the trial introduction of1,411 laborers beginning in April 1943; and theFebruary 1944 “vice-ministers’ resolution” thatled to the full importation phase beginning inMarch 1944. (Kishi Nobusuke authorized bothmeasures, first as Minister of Commerce andIndustry and later as Vice-Minister ofMunitions; both portfolios included extensiveoversight of forced labor.)

Companies submitted their numerical requestsfor Chinese manpower to the Welfare Ministry,which in turn consulted with the MunitionsMinistry and Transportation Ministry todetermine allotments. Then the Beijing-basedNorth China Labor Association (NCLA), staffedmostly with Chinese after having been set upby the Japanese Embassy and Imperial Army,oversaw the procurement, detention andshipment of workers to Japan. The forcibledeportations were carried out over a 25-monthperiod ending in May 1945. Some 90 percent ofworkers were obtained via the NCLA,according to the FMR, mostly through the

vaguely defined method of “administrativeprovision” that grew increasingly violent overtime and is discussed below.

Region of North China where forced laborerswere obtained: Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong,Shaanxi,Henan provinces (NHK Special)

Nearly all laborers came from three provincesof North China around Beijing and half camefrom Hebei Province alone. Sixty percent ofworkers left wives and children behind in Chinaand were presumably their families’ mainbreadwinners, a statistic that strongly suggeststhe involuntarily nature of the program. It isalso necessary to understand the ruthlessnessof Japan’s military occupation of North China,which in some respects resembled laterAmerican warfare in Vietnam. (Americanmilitary planners reportedly studied Japanesecounterinsurgency tactics, the results inVietnam being similarly unsuccessful.)

Inose Kenzo, 71, interviewed on camera byNHK, was a soldier in late 1943 in a NorthChina combat zone contested by Japanese,Communist Chinese and Nationalist Chinesearmies. Despite having seized coastal citieswith relative ease years earlier, Inose explainedthat Japan was unable to hold the villages ofthe North China plain after dark and facedcontinued guerrilla resistance from forces

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associated with the Communist Eighth RouteArmy. During “subjugation operations” (tobatsusakusen) lasting three or four weeks, Inose’sunit roamed around the periphery of Japanese-held territory until their food or ammunitionran out, pil laging food through “localrequisition”.

“Even in the cases of children and youngwomen, we never knew who might have aweapon,” Inose said of the search-and-destroymissions. “So whoever ran away from us wasconsidered an enemy combatant. We tookeverybody we arrested to our garrison andconfined them to an army facility as prisonersof war. In other words, they were war booty.We fought and won the prize; we consideredthose people to be wares we had acquired. Atfirst we took ammunition, small arms, food andmoney as our war booty, but eventually peoplebecame booty too. That’s how any Chinese wholooked as if he could work came to be treatedas a possession that could supply laborpower.”[17]

NHK also referred to “laborer hunting” (rokogari) in disputed areas of North China, apractice that predated the deportation ofworkers to Japan. Earlier, those capturedsupplied forced labor to war industries inManchuria and parts of North China. Inoserecounted how his army unit, sometimes withthe help of collaborationist Chinese soldiers,surrounded entire farming hamlets andcaptured all mature males. However, Japannever accorded Asians official POW status.Interrogation by torture invariably followed,with a large percentage of men then enteringthe forced labor feeder system. The practiceserved the dual purpose of cleansing ruralvillages of actual or potential adversaries andproviding desperately needed workers, therebyinadvertently fueling a nationalist response.

FORCIBLE RECRUITMENT

The activities of the North China Labor

Association must be viewed within this contextof state-sanctioned Japanese terror and theextreme dehumanization of Chinese people itentailed. With Japanese leaders in place at thetop rungs, the NCLA was a full-service agencyfor labor procurement, transportation, securityand disbursement of wages. The associationalso maintained housing and training facilitiesand provided sanitation for them. But thereality of the NCLA’s work, and especially thepredominant practice of administrativeprovision, was very different from innocuous-sounding official descriptions.[18]

After receiving approval from Tokyo for theirlabor requests, Japanese companies dispatchedrepresentatives to Bei j ing for directnegotiations with the NCLA, in the hope ofobtaining desirable workers quickly.Corporations in several Site Reports, alongwith the government in the Foreign MinistryReport, severely criticized the NCLA andsought to shift blame for Chinese forced laboronto the association itself.

Administrative provision “was concerned onlywith raw numbers and there were manyproblems with laborers’ physical fitness andwillingness for work,” according to the FMR.“The reality at the time was that the maintargets for introduction [of labor to Japan] wereformer prisoners of war, reeducated soldiersand convicted criminals. But the numbers ofsuch workers was smaller than expected.…Compounding the difficulty of meeting laborneeds even for North China itself, the region’sgood harvests, high commodity prices anddeteriorating law and order exacerbatedprocurement problems. Vendors advanced intoNorth China with impetuous plans for obtainingthe required numbers of workers. As a result ofthese incomplete provision networks, Chineseworkers of inferior quality were procured usinghalf-forcible means.”[19]

Labor supply and demand realities, along witha deteriorating security environment, created a

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late-war seller’s market for labor contracts inNorth China, making it unlikely that Chinesewould willingly migrate to the land of theirunwelcome occupiers. Furukawa Mining’sreport for its Ashio worksite shows that thecompany requested 300 workers from theNCLA but received only 257. The Ashio SiteReport states that an NCLA branch office sentChinese and Japanese staff to villages aroundShijiazhuang and “gathered by hunting,” withabductions of local residents and prisonersbeing carried out in the presence of Furukawaemployees. NCLA personnel were recorded assaying to one another, “We will be hated byaverage Chinese because the recruitment isbeing done half-forcibly. It is dangerous and wemight be killed.”[20]

A Mitsui Site Report explained under theheading of “recruitment methods” how 600workers were obtained in two batches of 300.The first batch resulted partly from “wholesaleabductions by Chinese police” of laborers frombusy streets, and the rounding up of thievesand traffic violators who were then turned overto the NCLA’s subcontracting agencies. Thesecond batch involved sending prisoners ofwar, local robbers and spies to a labor trainingcenter for a period of time and then furnishingthem to agencies. Significantly, the Mitsuireport confirms that the NCLA transportedworkers only after requesting and receivingpermission from the Japanese Embassy andArmy. Mitsui added, “Workers obtainedthrough administrative provision had beengathered by force, so these men often tried torun away and escape to their hometowns.”[21]

A Site Report produced by Kumatani Corp.offered the following blunt conclusion for theCFL scheme’s general lack of success: “Laborsalaries had been exhausted by that time inNorth China. The Chinese people’s anti-Japanese sentiment and uncooperative attitudemade the situation very difficult, which is whythe industrial labor association had to rely onadministrative provision. The result was that all

of the workers introduced to our company wereconvicts who had little experience in manuallabor. That was the number one cause of theprogram’s failure.” [22]

NHK GOES TO CHINA

The Chinese government did not make NHK’stask of filming in China easy during thesummer of 1993. It took the network fourmonths to get permission to visit China on aone-week visa, and a pair of governmentminders constantly accompanied the NHKpersonnel, who had to receive time-consumingauthorization each time they entered a newcounty. A Japanese photographer wouldexperience similar red tape when he traveledaround rural North China to produce a 2003book documenting the current living conditionsof forced labor survivors.[23] This realityunderscores Beijing’s lukewarm past supportfor CFL reparations, and makes clear theunfairness of Japanese court rulings that rejectcompensation by saying victims should havefiled their lawsuits years earlier.

NHK was greatly assisted by Liu Baochen, aprofessor at Hebei University who with the helpof students began locating former workers andrecording their oral histories in the late 1980s.“I started this research to fill in the blankspaces of China’s modern history,” Liureported. “Until now in China, there have nobooks or materials of any sort to elucidate theactual conditions of forced labor. It has beenburied in the darkness of history. That’s why Iwant to make the facts clear, starting with thetestimony of the people who were taken toJapan.”[24]

Remarkably for the time, Liu distinguishedbetween the right of individual Chinese citizensto claim compensation from Japanesecorporations and the right of the Chinese stateto claim compensation from the Japanese state,adding that Beijing and Tokyo agree that thelatter right was terminated by the 1972 Joint

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Declaration. The Chinese government wouldnot make the same distinction until 1995, whenit finally gave victims the green light to filelawsuits in Japanese courts.

Liu Zhongtang, still a Shijiazhuang-area farmerlike most of those who were taken to Ashio,supplied for the camera a first-personperspective on his “recruitment” viaadministrative provision on June 10, 1944. NHKinquired whether he had gone to Japanvoluntarily, prompting Liu’s animatedresponse: “Don’t be ridiculous! There’s no waythat could have been termed recruitment.Nobody wanted to go to Japan no matter whatwages they might have received. That’sbecause there was no guarantee of everreturning to China alive. They bound us andforced us to go! How can you call thatrecruitment?” [25]

Liu reenacts his 1944 abduction (NHK Special)

The 28-year-old Liu was snatched from his farmnear the war’s shifting front lines by Japaneseand Chinese puppet soldiers. Duringinterrogation he was nearly suffocated byhaving a wet towel placed over his mouth, andtold that “if you are not an Eighth Route Armymember, then you will tell us the names ofvillagers who are!”[26] Liu’s wife and fatherlearned that he had been abducted and takento Japan only when he returned home in

January 1946; his mother died in his absence.

Thousands of Japan-bound Chinese passedthrough Shijiazhuang’s ghastly Sekimon LaborTraining Center, a Japanese-run prison untilthe name was changed in 1943 and still aprison in reality after that. Liu Zhongtang,though, was taken by Japanese Army truck to asmaller detention facility and then by train tothe Tanggu concentration camp near the portcity of Tianjin, which he called the most hellishleg of his 18-month nightmare. He spent about50 days in the dirty and overcrowded Tanggucamp, which was patrolled by Chinese guardsbut had Japanese soldiers manning the gatesand watch towers with machine guns. Anadmixture of farmers, penal convicts,demobilized soldiers, and Communist andNationalist captured troops, the inmates wereconfined to their beds for 18 hours a day andbeaten if they opened their eyes.

Food, sanitation and medical care were soabysmal at the Tanggu facility and other portsof departure that, according to the ForeignMinistry Report, 812 men died in transitbetween China and their intended worksites inJapan (564 of them at sea and 248 inJapan).[27] However, the overall CFL fatalityfigure of 6,830 excludes the thousands of menwho likely died in detention or were killedwhile trying to escape prior to reaching theChinese coast. The FRM blamed the Chineseside for abuses at Tanggu and aboard theoverloaded cargo ships in which workers wereforced to sit directly atop loads of coal. Theseconditions undoubtedly contributed to deathsin Japan, but the Tokyo government wasultimately responsible for events in occupiedNorth China.

Claimed the Ashio Site Report, with its vestedinterest in soft-pedaling a 42 percent deathrate: “Concerning the treatment of Chineselaborers, facilities established by Chineseauthorities were extremely inadequate. Therewere many points such as the provision of food

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that we truly regretted. A major problem wasthat there was not a single doctor for a placeaccommodating more than 2,000 people. Thestaple food of mantou [Chinese buns] was half-cooked and there was no water system, forcingpeople to drink muddy water from theShirakawa River. Chinese laborers who werealready malnourished had to stay for longperiods in Japan and many of them continued tosuffer from diarrhea. … Japanese companiesurged local agencies of the North China LaborAssociation to seriously reflect on this.”[28]

CONDITIONS IN JAPAN

The primary cause of the program’s high deathtoll was that conditions in Japan were wretchedand workers were treated harshly. The goalwas to maximize industrial production, and tominimize the security risks of bringing young,male enemy nationals to the home islands, bycrushing their will to resist. Official state andcorporate policies called for extreme campsecurity, inferior clothing, overcrowdedsleeping quarters, primitive sanitation with nobathing facilities, limited medical care, andminimal amounts of the poorest qualityfood—which was to be withheld as necessary toensure discipline.

Conditions were closely monitored through asystem of camp inspections and companyreporting that involved the Interior Ministry,Welfare Ministry, Munitions Ministry andGreater East Asia Ministry. Yet the 1946records include more attempts by thegovernment and companies to evadeaccountability by blaming each other and,again, the Chinese themselves. NHK madeeffective use of frank Investigator Reports andpreviously unknown “smoking gun” documents,leaving zero doubt about who was really atfault.

“Measures for Controlling Imported ChineseWorkers,” general directives issued by theInterior Ministry in April 1944, show that police

were acutely worried about escapes andorganized rebellions. The Chinese were to bequarantined and separated at all times from theKorean conscripts and Allied POWs whofrequently performed forced labor at the sameindustrial sites, as well as from local Japanese.In June 1944, based on the so-called “Honmarecommendations,” the Interior Ministry issuedmore draconian guidelines called “ReferenceDocuments for Use of Chinese Workers.”

GHQ photo of liberated Chinese at Hanaoka(NHK Special)

Honma Fusakichi, NHK recounted, had gone toChina as a teenager out of a sense of adventureand stayed for 20 years. After first working as a“coolie,” he became involved in transportationventures using Chinese laborers and later ranChinese soldiers in gathering intelligence forthe Imperial Navy. While contracted to theInterior Ministry in March and April of 1944,Honma accompanied ministry officials on 20high-level visits to CFL worksites, concludingthat conditions were far too soft. (Okazaki Eijo,who was in charge of the ministry’s campinspections and also headed the Special HigherPolice, had tapped Honma for the job. Postwarlustration would keep Okazaki out of publicoffice until 1952, but he was elected to the Dieton the maiden LDP ticket in 1955 and laterserved as Kishi’s deputy cabinet secretary.)

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“Reference Documents for Use of ChineseWorkers,” the startling product of Honma’sadvice, cover all aspects of camp life and arequoted at length:

“Regarding living quarters, the ceiling shouldnot be more than [ten centimeters] higher thanworkers’ heads when they are seated. Then wecould more than double the number of workerspresently in camps. Bathing facilities areespecially excessive and are not necessary forChinese workers. How many of them have everexperienced taking a Japanese bath? Accordingto Chinese customs … if you take someone intoyour home and invite them to bathe, it meansthey can sleep with your wife or daughter. It isthe attitude that the conquered show toconquerors. Baths will spoil them and makethem work less hard. Some hot or cold water ina basin is sufficient. …

“If you give them only a little food, they will betense and their work productivity will improve.If you give them more food, their tension willdecrease and more people will become sick,lowering productivity. … It may be difficult toreduce food rations right away, so you can startwith the sick and workers who have beenresting. Or, it should be possible to reduce foodrations by a small amount every day. … Thelabor power of Chinese workers is said to bethe best in the world. If you use Chineseproperly, they will work several times harderthan Japanese. … At present the Chinese [inJapan] come in third; with Japanese first andKoreans second. It is said the Chinese arespoiled. If you allot them twice as much workas Japanese or Koreans, it will be moreeffective. …

“The more affection you show to Chinese, themore spoiled they become. And when theybecome spoiled, they return kindness withingratitude. The Chinese are a race unaffectedby feelings. … In China runaways are beheadedor shot. If we do not punish runaways in asimilarly severe manner here in Japan, we fear

it will become more and more difficult tocontrol them. … It is true that the Chinese haveloving feelings for their homeland and thegraves of their ancestors. But they never shedreal tears. Tears for people like them areskillful acting.”[29]

NHK then introduced Site Reports that eitherparaphrased or quoted directly from theHonma recommendations, indicating that theybecame nationwide standards after filteringthrough prefectural police channels. NittetsuMining Corp.’s report for its Kamaishi site,citing Iwate police instructions, referred to the10 centimeters of head space and said bathsare appropriate only for conquerors. Itmentioned other security instructions includingbarbed-wire fencing more than two meters higharound sleeping quarters with locked doors, aswell as a camp self-government system thatrewarded cooperative Chinese and led toviolence among workers. Nittetsu, needing tofinesse the fact that 41 percent of Kamaishiworkers died, contended that the state’sexcessive top-down control had the effect oflowering industrial output.

The Investigator Report for Ashio included thefollowing numbered directives from Tochigipolice: “2) Be overpowering as method ofcontrol. … 3) When you capture runaways, donot let them return to their camp and workagain. (If they are allowed to return, otherworkers will be relieved to see that runawaysare not killed, causing others to flee.) … 5)Make the living quarters as shabby as possible.… 6) Make the food as poor as possible andconsider it to be fodder. They should be givenmostly bran, corn or leeks—not rice or wheat.Feed them according to the diligence of theirwork.” [30] As with the Honma guidelines, theoverall image suggested is that of a kennel forlivestock rather than a work camp for voluntarycontract laborers.

While company-produced reports predictablyomit mention of cruelty or torture, NHK

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presented the Investigator Report for MitsuiMining Corp.’s Sunagawa worksite inHokkaido, detailing specific deaths from“illegal conduct.” In one case, a recapturedescapee was hung from the ceiling, beaten andthen suffocated by having cloth stuffed in hismouth. NHK located one of the deceased man’sformer barracks mates in China. He recalled oncamera a virtually identical account of theincident.

COVERING TRACKS, BLAMING VICTIMS

Chinese forced labor deaths became a majorconcern only after Japan’s military defeat,prompting the state and industry to jointlyconceal the truth. In an “Important Notice forPreparing Name Rosters” discovered within anInvestigator Report, Hokkaido prefecturalpolice directed, “Causes of death such asmalnutrition, starvation, suicide and death byoccupational injury should be rewritten so asnot to stimulate other parties. The rewriting ofdeath certificates should be coordinated withdoctors and local public officials.”[31]

Otomo Fukuo told NHK about one railroadworksite in Hokkaido where 26 out of 90 deathcertificates had been rewritten and falsified onpolice orders. On the night that Otomo finishedhis inspection of the site, a local doctordiscreetly confessed that police had told him“not to write anything on death certificates thatcould cause trouble later.”[32] The result wasthat innocuous-sounding fatalities due to colitisand gastrointestinal inflammation came topredominate. But Otomo found that real causesof death were sheer lack of caloric intake, lackof medical care, cruelty and exploitation.

The inhumane treatment resulted inwidespread health problems. The ForeignMinistry Report notes that more than 20,000men, over half the total, contracted skindiseases (an unsurprising result of working inmines and never bathing) and these led tonumerous deaths. Loss of eyesight due to

vitamin deficiency and poor sanitation was alsovery common.

A Kajima Corp. Site Report, unrelated to theHanaoka construction site, shamelessly pinnedblame for rampant illness and disease onworkers themselves. “Chinese workers lack anyconcept of sanitation and wash their facesusing the same water and basin that otherChinese with virulent eye diseases use. Anunexpectedly large number lost their eyesightas a result. … Regarding the cause of diseases,most skin disorders were brought with themfrom China, including stubborn eczema whichis difficult to treat and leads to suppuration.The cause of gastroenteritis is traceable toliving environments in China. In addition tohaving weak bodies and weak resistance, theylack a personal sense of hygiene and neglecttheir health. For example, they stealthily pickup and eat rotten leftover food that has beenthrown away, resulting in colon bacillus andmaking activity difficult.”[33]

A company with a great number of abuses toaccount for, Kajima made an in-companytransfer of 280 laborers from an Iwate mine toan Ibaraki mine in April 1945. Fully half ofthese men died in Japan, with the Ibarakiworksite’s report observing that none of themcould get off the train unassisted and 70percent of them could not walk at all due toeye, lung and intestines illnesses. Kajima’sHanaoka Site Report attributes most deaths toskin diseases and diarrhea, making the June1945 worker uprising and retaliatory massacreof Chinese sound like isolated incidents thatcould not have been avoided. The FMR says theHanaoka Incident resulted from fear andresentment toward supervisors, worsening foodconditions, additional work hours and generaldissatisfaction. No Investigator Report forHanaoka has ever been found.

NHK interviews of retired company staff andpeople living around former worksites shedlight on the cruelty of Chinese forced labor.

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“These were people we were at war with inthose days,” a former mine employee said.“We’d have killed each other if we had met onthe battlefield. The Chinese were our enemies.”Several Japanese offered similar explanations,reasoning that the CFL workers “were enemiesoriginally, so there was no choice but to treatthem rough.”[34]

POSTWAR PRIORITIES

Representing all major companies in the sector,the Construction Control Association movedquickly after the nation’s August 15 defeat toset up the Chinese and Korean Labor ResponseCommittee. NHK referred to a committeereport that described the industry’s goals in theimmediate postwar period as follows: 1)destroying documents; 2) implementing adefense strategy for preventing war crimesinvestigations from spreading beyond Hanaoka;and 3) obtaining monetary compensation fromthe government for costs associated with bothforced labor programs. The committee reportmentions three days of document-burning thatcommenced on August 16 at the direction ofthe Munitions Ministry.[35]

American soldiers stumbled upon dead anddying Chinese at Hanaoka in October 1945while liberating Allied POW camps in the Akitaarea, bringing Chinese forced labor to GHQ’sattention and sparking a war crimes probe. Bythe following month the construction industryhad a plan to protect Kajima, always a highlyinfluential company and an early promoter ofthe CFL concept, by conducting its own surveyof labor by Koreans and Chinese. Meanwhile, atop MOFA priority throughout the fall of 1945was beseeching GHQ for help in maintainingwork camp security and quickly repatriatingforeign laborers, who were causing disruptionsand demanding wages across the country.

The construction group continued itsadversarial stance toward forced laborinquiries by retaining a Kobe lawyer for

damage control in the eventful spring of 1946.The lawyer in turn hired Hirai Shoichi, acentral figure in the ongoing compilation of theForeign Ministry Report who retired from theministry’s directorate in May 1946 to moredirectly assist corporate Japan in the evasion ofwar crimes prosecutions. Besides being anearly postwar case of amakudari, Hirai’s workon Hanaoka’s behalf underscores the self-exculpatory nature of the entire FMR process.

Hirai Shoichi examines report he compiled in1946 (NHK Special)

“To put it bluntly, the goal was to hide thetrouble at Hanaoka from GHQ,” the 87-year-oldHirai told NHK. “I was working to compile theFMR so they thought I would be useful. I triedto prevent the trouble from spreading to thecompany i tse l f . In the end, the GHQinvestigation ended without going that far andKajima was saved. That’s why Kajima hascontinued without any problems untiltoday.”[36] Hanaoka-related convictions at theClass B/C war crimes trials in Yokohama werelimited to six local police and low-level campstaffers; light prison sentences on reducedcharges were meted out and early releaseswere granted soon after the Occupation ended.

Hirai was the chief investigator on the FMRproject, having managed coal-related laborneeds in China as a researcher with the

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Greater East Asia Ministry before it wasabsorbed by MOFA at war’s end. Hiraifunctioned as the middleman between MOFA’stop brass and the 16 investigators, dispensingin new bank notes the money needed to fundthe study but not visiting any worksites himself.Instead, he stayed in Tokyo and worked on thesection of the FMR dealing with the cabinetresolutions that authorized the program.

“Chinese workers whose country won the warhad been forcibly brought here, so it was a verybad situation for Japan. That’s because it wasforced labor,” Hirai frankly recalled of theperiod so critical to the formation of postwarattitudes about war responsibility. “GHQ wasjust beginning to comb through Japan’s warconduct in detail. There was a danger that thistype of problem would be treated as a warcrime. That was our number one fear at thetime. To stave off war crimes prosecutions, wehad to prepare something in advance, beforeGHQ could investigate. That’s why we carriedout our investigation.”[37]

GHQ AND CFL

Even though serious crimes had beensystematically committed at all 135 Chineseforced labor sites, GHQ brought war crimescharges against only two, reflecting a racialdouble standard that devalued the suffering ofJapan’s Asian victims in contrast with Europeanand American POWs. The Occupation’s“reverse course,” the shift from purgingwart ime f igures from publ ic l i fe anddismantling zaibatsu conglomerates to policiesthat emphasized political stability andeconomic recovery, also played a major role.

NHK went to Los Angeles and interviewedWilliam Simpson, the former CFL investigatorwho had led the Hanaoka inquiry until beingsent back to the U.S. in April 1946. He gave thefilm crew a previously unknown 30-page reportabout Hanaoka atrocities he had written in1945. In Simpson’s informed opinion, American

authorities lost interest in prosecuting forcedlabor because “there was a civil war in Chinaand there was not much to be gained by theinvestment of effort by the United States. Ajudgment was made not to emphasize theshortcomings of Japanese corporate personnelat higher levels because these were people wewanted to work with in the Cold War asallies.”[38]

Insight into early 1946 interactions betweenGHQ and corporate Japan is found in “UnjustEnrichment: How Japan’s Companies BuiltPostwar Fortunes Using American POWs.” Thebook’s author, Linda Goetz Holmes, reprints aconfidential Feb. 12 report by William Sebald,political advisor to General MacArthur, and aconfidential Feb. 15 memorandum to thesecretary of state. Both records describemeetings with top executives of the leadingMitsui zaibatsu, who express their deepconcern about looming war reparationspayments and warn of social dislocations thateconomics reforms could produce.

“As Japanese companies, under the lash of themilitary, it is hardly reasonable to expect thelarge Japanese combines to [have done]otherwise than carry out the instructions of theGovernment during the war,” Sebald wrote onFeb. 12, summarizing Mitsui’s position withapparent approval. “Too rapid a disintegrationof the large combines can only result ineconomic chaos in Japan. Once such chaos doesresult, Japan will be ripe for Communism,already growing as a result of the cleverinfiltration of Communists among the workersin all branches of industry. Is it believed that aCommunistic Japan is in the best interests ofthe United States?”[39]

Very early on, GHQ appears sympathetic toMitsui’s portrayal of itself as a victim ofmilitarism in need of lenient postwartreatment, something the San Francisco PeaceTreaty would formalize in 1951 by waiving, atAmerican insistence, reparations claims against

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Japan by Allied nations. Within days of theMitsui-GHQ meetings, moreover, companiesbegan submitting their Site Reports to theJapanese government for inclusion in theForeign Ministry Report.

The spring of 1946 also saw indemnificationpayments totaling 56,725,474 yen from theJapanese state to all 35 corporations that usedChinese forced labor, a practice GHQ wasaware of and eventually put a stop to. The FMRdescribes the compensation following a cost-benefit analysis of the supposedly unprofitableCFL program, but payouts were directlyproportional to numbers of Chinese workersobtained. Mitsui’s 5,696 workers were the mostthat any company received, representing nearly15 percent of the total. Mitsui received about14 percent of the state compensation, also thehighest figure.

Chinese and Allied POWs in virtually all cases,by contrast, were never compensated for theirforced labor either by the Japanese state ortheir employers. Most Korean labor conscriptsnever received the wages they earned, despitetheir status as imperial subjects. Even today,the Japanese government continues to holdunpaid wages and related deposits for Chinese,POW and Korean forced labor. Beyond themonetary aspects, a basic aim of the postwarevasion of accountability for forced labor hasbeen the perpetuation of key features of thewartime political and economic order. Thiscontinuity, in turn, greatly hampers redressefforts.

MOFA ARCHIVES

None of the three types of CFL reports werepresented at the Yokohama war crimes trials,but until recently it had remained unclearwhether GHQ ever knew of their existence.Chen of the Overseas Chinese Association toldNHK that MOFA actually gave the Americansan English version of the FMR. Hirai, however,doubted that GHQ was aware of the document

because he was not asked about it on the singleoccasion he was summoned for questioning.

“You are the only people to ever ask me aboutthe report in any detail,” Hirai told NHK with achuckle.[40] Hirai said he assumed the 30FMRs produced and then distributed to topMOFA officials had been destroyed or wouldremain concealed forever, and appearedshocked to see the Investigator Reports again.

The GHQ mystery may have been solved inDecember 2003 with the release of declassifiedrecords from the MOFA archives. The recordsshow that the Japanese government stubbornlyresisted American requests for CFL records in1947 and never handed over the FMR. Instead,the state once again solicited information fromcompanies, which expressed their displeasureat the renewed request and submitted onlyminimal material. In November 1948, the samemonth the Japanese war crimes tribunal ended,the government finally sent a “jeep-ful” ofstatistical data to GHQ, which returned thedocuments the following February. [41]

“GHQ had many things to deal with, so they didnot bother with such minute matters,”concluded Hirai about the early postwarpursuit—and avoidance—of the truth aboutChinese forced labor. “Well, that definitely putus at ease. There are divided opinions: somepeople say war crimes should have been madecompletely clear, while others say hiding asmuch as possible was better. I think it wasbasically Japanese-like to leave thingsambiguous, without making them into warcrimes. Japan has become so prosperous duringthese forty -odd years thanks to th isapproach.”[42]

A far more weighty release of MOFA recordstook place in November 2002, and wasdescribed at length by the author in a July 2005a r t i c l e (http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/1693 ) for Japan Focus. Lawyers for Chinese

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plaintiffs in a Fukuoka lawsuit were the first tointroduce as courtroom evidence some 2,000pages of these declassified documents aboutChinese forced labor, many of them formerlytop secret, from the years 1952-72. The recordsincluded reports by MOFA and othergovernment agencies, minutes of meetingsbetween bureaucrats and lawmakers, andsummaries of heated confrontations withcitizen groups.[43]

The MOFA archives confirm that throughoutthe 1950s and early 1960s, progressiveJapanese citizens excavated the remains ofdeceased Chinese victims and pushed thegovernment to repatriate them to China, whilee r e c t i n g m e m o r i a l s a n d h o l d i n gcommemorations. The Japanese government isshown to have gone to great lengths to evaderesponsibility for Chinese forced labor bysuppressing evidence, formulating a cover-upstrategy, and repeatedly lying to the Diet andcitizen groups.

The state campaign of deception peaked duringthe late-1950s when Kishi was prime minister.His administration made a concerted effort toblock the CFL issue from being raised in theDiet because of its potentially explosive impacton the controversial revision of the U.S.-Japansecurity treaty in 1960, and to avoidreparations demands from the Chinesegovernment. Kishi’s personal responsibility forforced labor was also surely a major factor, aswas the collective desire of Japanese industryto hide the truth.

Despite the official denials presented at thebeginning of this article, the MOFA recordsmade public in 2002 show that the ForeignMinistry, Welfare Ministry, National PoliceAgency and secretariats of multiple cabinetspossessed substantial records about Chineseforced labor deep into the postwar period.Reparations activists charge that the Japanesegovernment and private companies may still behiding CFL records today. If not, they say, this

would confirm that the records were secretlydestroyed.

The NHK of 1993 undoubtedly would havehighlighted the long-running cover up if theMOFA records had been available a decadeearlier. The conspiracy revealed by thedocuments was a far graver matter, involvedfar more actors and extended over a far longertime frame than the Watergate scandal thatbrought down an American president threedecades earlier. In the event, the incriminatingMOFA archives were not reported by the NHKof 2002 or other Japanese media in any seriousor sustained manner. Few Japanese, as a result,are fully aware of their government’s dishonesttrack record.

NHK AS REDRESS ADVOCATE

I recently received an emotional email from anethnic Chinese man who read my article aboutChinese forced labor in the Singapore StraitsTimes.[44] He related the hardships his familyexperienced in Singapore under Japaneseoccupation, accused the Japanese media of aninformation blackout concerning the factsabout World War II, and predicted another warbetween China and Japan. Certainly theJapanese media have done a poor job ofdescribing World War II atrocities, but theSingaporean’s caricature was overblown.

He would have been especially amazed thatJapan’s public broadcaster aired an exposé like“The Phantom Foreign Ministry Report.” Theproject coincided with the high-water mark ofJapan’s collective awareness of its warresponsibility and could not be replicatedtoday. Indeed, CFL activists say they haveasked NHK to rebroadcast the documentary,but have been told that the current domesticpolitical climate makes that impossible. Theprogram continues to be shown in CFLcourtrooms, typically after corporate objectionshave been overruled.

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Following up on the 1993 broadcast, NHK senta questionnaire to 24 of the 35 corporationsthen in business. Nineteen companiesresponded, with nearly all saying they had noplans to reinvestigate the issue or compensatevictims. Regarding CFL deaths, one respondentsaid corporations bear some responsibility; 13respondents said “no comment” because we“cannot confirm facts today” or we “can’t judgematters at this stage”; three said the problemwas the government’s exclusive responsibility.Eleven corporations said they would considerapologies and compensation if asked; threecorporations (including Kajima) said they wouldconsider apologies but not compensation; onlytwo said they would consider neither.

Map of all 135 Chinese forced laborsites, prepared by plaintiffs’ lawyers

NHK’s survey was conducted before theChinese government gave the go-ahead in 1995for its citizens to sue in Japan, and well beforethe main wave of CFL lawsuits appeared after2000. The survey results suggested grounds forcautious optimism, but courtroom outcomes

and the recent hardening of corporate attitudeshave dashed expectations.

Half a dozen years before Germany set up itsforced labor redress fund, NHK pointed outthat Mercedes Benz had voluntarily researchedthe company’s wartime role and compensatedforced workers. “Should not Japanesecompanies also have the self-awareness to atleast properly research their own histories?”NHK asked. “Can these corporations move intoChina and develop their businesses whileleaving their past unexamined?”[45]

In the book more than in the TV documentary,NHK’s advocacy of the nascent CFL causecame close to violating the political neutralitymandated by its charter—ironically, somethingit is accused of today due to general support ofgovernment positions. “It has becomeimpossible to evade the issue throughmakeshift excuses like, ‘We do not know thedetails about so-called Chinese forced laborbecause there are no public documents.’ Thenatural thing to do is learn the historical factsand gain a correct understanding. This hasbecome possible at last,” NHK wrote in1994.[46]

“Especially now, at a time when appeals frompeople who were victimized by Japan duringthe war are coming from Asian countries oneafter another, and in order for Japan to beaccepted as a member of the Asian community,it is necessary for Japan to clarify the wartimefacts as soon as possible,” the book continued.“A half century after the end of World War II,the state, industry and each individual Japaneseare now faced with the serious task of comingto terms with the past.”[47]

That task remains unfulfilled today, as Japanesesociety has, for the most part, declined to acton NHK’s advice. And with self-assertivenationalism steadily displacing historical self-examination, the country has moved furtheraway from acceptance in Northeast Asia.

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CONSCIENTIOUS JAPANESE

The Japanese state and industry have activelyopposed CFL reparation efforts for six decades,while most Japanese individuals are apatheticand ignorant of the historical reality—due in nosmall part to the silence of thousands who werepersonally involved with the labor program inChina or Japan. Yet vital exceptions exist.These include Otomo Fukuo’s apparent leak ofthe MOFA records to the Overseas ChineseAssociation around 1950; the vital reparationswork accomplished throughout that decade bythe Memorial Committee; and the ongoingdedication of lawyers, researchers and citizensin courtrooms and citizen actions across thenation.

NHK devoted a subchapter, called “Voice fromthe Valley: Atonement of a Former Soldier,” tothe activities of Inose Kenzo. Introduced above,Inose helped forcibly deport Chinese and laterbecame an amateur historian of forced labor atthe Ashio copper mine, writing a book called“Mountain Stream of Deep Regret.” In the early1950s he joined local efforts on behalf of war-displaced Japanese still in China and helpedform the Tochigi chapter of the Japan-ChinaFriendship Association, a group that has beenpromoting CFL reparations for half a century.

Inose recalled his shock in 1958 at LiuLianren’s emergence from hiding in Hokkaido;Liu had been abducted from a region ofShandong Province not far from Inose’s basecamp. After learning (apparently through 1946records activists possessed) that two AshioChinese were unaccounted for, Inose becameobsessed with the possibility they could still behiding in the rugged mountains around therecently closed mine. He began canvassing thearea three or four times a week, searching forbone fragments around the camp crematoriumand questioning local villagers. When it wasdetermined that the missing Chinese had beensent to Hokkaido for plotting an escape, Inosetraveled to Hokkaido on his quest for truth-

telling and personal healing. Inose’s actionsduring this period were precisely the type ofgrassroots redress work that the state andcompanies have systematically sought tosubvert.

Inose Kenzo at the Ashio memorial (NHKSpecial)

The idea of a memorial at Ashio arose around1970, as part of a citizens’ movement to restoreJapan-China diplomatic ties and supportChina’s bid for United Nations membership.The impressive “Chinese Martyred HeroesMemorial” was erected in 1973, after 20million yen in contributions were raised withinthe prefecture. Local residents carried by handthe 109 football-sized stones that form the baseof the 10-meter-tall memorial and list thenames of the 109 dead Chinese—again,presumably obtained from either the nominallynon-existent FMR or the Ashio Site Report.Chinese remains were taken from a localtemple and placed inside the memorial.Someone secretly trims the grass around themonument and leaves flowers; Inose told NHKit could be a fellow China-front soldier seekingto expiate war guilt.[48]

Such reparations and reconciliation activitiesremain little known within Japan, and virtuallyunknown outside the county. Yet committedJapanese continue to quietly carry out similar

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projects in several locations, often inconjunction with CFL litigation efforts. Theproblem is the wide and growing disconnectbetween their work and actions of the Japanesestate and industry.

DIVISIVE ROAD AHEAD

Chinese forced labor victims and Japanesecompanies led by Mitsubishi Materials are nowentering a decisive phase of the reparationsprocess with diametrically opposed truthclaims. Certainly the major 1993-94investigation by NHK, the respected equivalentof the BBC in the United Kingdom and a farmore influential and ambitious organizationthan PBS in the United States, excludesMitsubishi’s interpretation that only voluntarycontract labor was involved.

Accountability has remained elusive inJapanese courts, where the government andcompanies still seek to shift responsibility ontoeach other. A legislative proposal for a CFLcompensation fund, stressing the injustice ofthe present situation and the importance ofmoving toward reconciliation, has languished inthe Diet for several years. As the “zenmenkaiketsu” (comprehensive solution) proposalsuccinctly summarizes: the Foreign MinistryReport identifies the 38,935 Chinese who werebrought to Japan; the state continues to holdlarge deposits that were never paid out to theseworkers; and corporations that used Chineseforced labor received substantial statecompensation.

The redress movement’s center of gravity issteadily shifting to China. Beijing has indicatedthat former workers will be permitted to fileclass-action lawsuits against Japanesecorporations in Chinese courts, marking thefirst litigation in China stemming from Japan’swar conduct. Chinese individuals andcompanies are contributing hundreds ofthousands of dollars in support of China-sidelegal efforts. Petitions demanding apologies

and compensation are being presented to theChinese offices of Japanese conglomeratesamid heavy media coverage. The oral historiesof 600 workers were published in a five-volumecollection last year, as younger family membersof CFL victims fast passing from the scene pickup the reparations torch.

Because Japan’s current approach to wartimeforced labor and other unresolved historicalinjustices represents a path that cannot lead toreconciliation, the CFL issue is certain tobecome more prominent within Sino-Japaneserelations in coming years.

The closing scene of “The Phantom ForeignMinistry Report” shows Inose Kenzo standingalone in front of the Chinese forced labormemorial, with the din of Ashio’s summercicadas dominating the soundtrack.

“My atonement for the war is not over yet,”Inose says with a pained expression. “I mustcontinue atoning. One hundred nine peopledied at Ashio. If there are still people living inChina who have not forgotten their resentment,I truly want to meet them and apologize. Thismemorial alone does not settle the past.”[49]

This article was written for Japan Focus.Copyright © William Underwood 2006. Postedat Japan Focus on August 8, 2006.

William Underwood, a faculty member atKurume Kogyo University, is completing hisdoctoral dissertation at Kyushu University onthe topic of Chinese forced labor redress. Hecan be reached at kyushubill@yahoo.com.

ENDNOTES

[1] The Diet remarks are quoted in NHKPublishing, The Phantom Foreign MinistryReport: The Record of Chinese Forced Labor(Maboroshi no Gaimusho Hokokusho:Chugokujin Kyosei Renko Kyosei Rodo no

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Kiroku). Tokyo: 1994; 9-10. The Kishi-era coverup is documented in William Underwood,“Chinese forced labor, the Japanesegovernment and the prospects for redress.”P o s t e d(http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/1693 )at Japan Focus on 8 July 2005.

[2] NHK Publishing, 10.

[3] NHK Special, “The Phantom ForeignMinistry Report: The Record of Chinese ForcedLabor (Maboroshi no Gaimusho Hokokusho:Chugokujin Kyosei Renko Kyosei Rodo noKiroku), 59-minute TV documentary, nationallybroadcast on 14 August 1993. See Footnote 1for the 1994 book by NHK Publishing.

[4] “Japan releases WWII forced labor reports,”Mainichi Daily News Online, 18 July 2003.

[5] Japan House of Representatives website.Written statement to Diet by Prime MinisterKoizumi Junichiro, 26 August 2003. Available(http://www.shugiin.go.jp/itdb_shitsumon.nsf/html/shitsumon/b156149.htm)

[6] See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Free speech –silenced voices: the Japanese media, thecomfort women tribunal, and the NHK affair.”Japan Focus, 13 Aug. 2005. Also available, byone of the principals involved, is LisaYoneyama, “NHK's censorship of Japanesecrimes against humanity.” Harvard AsiaQuarterly, Winter 2002. Abe Shinzo, now chiefcabinet secretary and leading prime ministerialcandidate, was another principal.

[7] MOFA website. “Statement by the ChiefCabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the result ofthe study on the issue of ‘comfort women,’” 4A u g u s t 1 9 9 3 . A v a i l a b l e(http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html)

[8] Daily Yomiuri editorial, “Asian Women’sFund based on distortions,” 6 Feb. 2005.

[9] Liberal Democratic Party website, “Ahistory of the Liberal Democratic Party,”c h a p t e r 1 6 . A v a i l a b l e(http://www.jimin.jp/jimin/english/history/chap16.html)

[10] Chugokujin Senso Higaisha no Yokyu woSasaeru Kai Nyuusu (Suopei quarterlynewsletter), No. 51, Feb. 2006.

[11] Satani Masayuki, The Truth and Glory ofthe Coal Mines: The Fabrication of KoreanForced Labor (Tanko no Shinjitsu to Eiko:Chosenjin Kyosei Renko no Kyoko). Nogata,Fukuoka: Nippon Kaigi Fukuoka ChikuhoChapter, December 2005.

[12] See Linda Sieg, “Japan lobby group backspa t r i o t i sm . ” Reu te r s s t o ry pos ted(ht tp : / /www.t inyur l .com/edyu7) a twww.swissinfo.org on 15 June 2006.

[13] Charles Hawley, “Germany agrees to openHolocaust archives.” Spiegel Online, 19 April2 0 0 6 . A v a i l a b l e(http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,411983,00.html)

[14] For the FMR in its entirety, see TanakaHiroshi and Matsuzawa Tessei, eds., ChineseForced Labor Documents: “The ForeignMinistry Report”, All Five Volumes (ChugokujinKyosei Renko Shiryo: “Gaimusho Hokokusho”Zen Gobunsatsu Hoka). Tokyo: Gendai Shokan,1995. In addition, a total of 111 Site Reportswere analyzed in Nishinarita Yutaka, ChineseForced Labor (Chugokujin Kyosei Renko).Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2002. Nishinaritasuspects that a full 135 reports may never havebeen produced, as some sites received workersvia intra-company transfers.

[15] NHK Publishing, 44.

[16] Ibid., 85.

[17] Ibid., 197.

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[18] For details about the NCLA’s organizationand operations, see Tanaka Hiroshi, “The state,corporations and Chinese forced labor: themechanism of ‘administrative provision’ oflabor power” (Chugokujin no kyosei renko tokuni to kigyo: rodoryoku “gyosei kyoshutsu” nomekanizumu), in Kosho Tadashi, TanakaHiroshi and Sato Takeo, eds., Nihon Kigyo noSenso Hanzai: Kyosei Renko no Kigyo Sekinin.Tokyo: Soshisha, 2000; 126-153.

[19] NHK Publishing, 73.

[20] Ibid., 146.

[21] Ibid., 149-150.

[22] Ibid., 150.

[23] See Suzuki Kenji, Living Witnesses ofChinese Forced Labor (Chugokujin KyoseiRenko no Iki Shonintachi). Tokyo: Kobunken,2003.

[24] NHK Publishing, 118-119.

[25] Ibid., 129.

[26] Ibid., 128.

[27] Ibid., 152.

[28] Ibid., 148.

[29] Ibid., 161-162.

[30] Ibid., 155-156.

[31] Ibid., 43.

[32] Ibid., 43.

[33] Ibid., 167-168.

[34] Ibid., 172.

[35] Ibid., 210-213.

[36] Ibid., 61.

[37] Ibid., 58-59.

[38] Ibid., 191.

[39] Linda Goetz Holmes, Unjust Enrichment:How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunesusing American POWs. Mechanicsburg, PA:Stackpole Books, 2001; 177-79.

[40] NHK Publishing, 62.

[41] “GHQ ni hokokusho dasazu,” NishinipponShimbun, 24 Dec. 2003; “Foreign Ministrydragged feet with GHQ,” Asahi Shimbun online,25 Dec. 2003.

[42] NHK Publishing, 62-63.

[43] See “Gaimusho ‘gokuhi’ bunsho ga kataruChugokujin kyosei renko kyosei rodo jiken nosengoshi: kokusai hanzai inmetsu kosaku nokazukazu to heiwa yuko wo negau naigaiseron.” Fukuoka: Liigaru Bukkusu, 2003. The32-page booklet excerpts MOFA archivaldocuments submitted to the Fukuoka HighCourt by plaintiffs’ lawyers. See Footnote 1 forthe author’s original article.

[44] See William Underwood, “East Asia’sTroubled Waters – Part III: Chinese forced-labor victims press Japan to embrace emerginginternational standards of accountability.”Posted at YaleGlobal Online on 2 May 2006.A v a i l a b l e(http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=7338)

[45] NHK Publishing, 222.

[46] Ibid., 223.

[47] Ibid., 223.

[48] Ibid., 194-209.

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[49] Ibid., 209.