The Straits of Dead Souls: One Man's Investigation into the Disappearance of Mitsubishi Hiroshima's Korean Forced Labourers

Abstract

In the early 1970s, Fukagawa Munetoshi began to investigate the disappearance, a month after the end of World War II, of a group of Korean forced labourers who had worked at Mitsubishi's Hiroshima Shipyard. His account presents a complex picture of the working class in Japan during wartime and the immediate postwar period, as well as the Japanese colonial system for obtaining forced labour in Korea. It also raises serious questions about the responsibilities, past and present, of Japanese authorities in government and big business toward wartime Korean forced labourers. Fukagawa's story draws on his experience as a former Mitsubishi employee and atomic bomb survivor, and also his cultural awareness and criticism of Japanese chauvinism. His account provides an alternative view of the Hiroshima atomic bombing from the perspective of a group of Korean hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) who did not see themselves at that time as ‘victims’ of American military might, but instead of Japanese military conquest and occupation, even though the subsequent destructive health effects of radiation sickness changed their view in later decades.

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