A set of bones recovered at a wartime mine in Japan are human remains, police said yesterday, while a Japanese group helping search for the remains said they are certain to belong to about 180 mostly Korean forced laborers who died in an accident in 1942.
Police said their examination of the three bones and a skull found this week by Korean divers at the former site of the Chosei Mine in western Yamaguchi Prefecture confirmed they are all human remains.
However, police said their analysis could not determine whether the three limb bones and skull belonged to the same person, their age or the timing of the death.
Photo: Kyodo News via AP
The group, known as Kizamu Kai, said they are certain the remains belong to victims who died at the mine 83 years ago, and that the discovery is a major boost in their efforts to recover other remains of the 136 Korean forced laborers and 47 Japanese workers killed in the mine collapse.
“I was waiting for this day,” group representative Yoko Inoue said on Tuesday after the bones were found.
The recovery of the bones comes just days after a weekend summit in Tokyo between Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung showcasing friendly ties between the two countries to cooperate on major challenges, such as regional security and trade, while avoiding historical differences.
The Chosei undersea mine started operations in 1914. In February 1942, part of the ceiling of a mine shaft collapsed, flooding the mine and killing the 183 workers inside. The accident had long been forgotten until a group of citizens started to investigate in 1991, initially to erect a memorial for the victims and preserve the former mining site, including the entrance and a ventilation shaft.
Historians say Japan used hundreds of thousands of Korean laborers before and during World War II, including those forcibly brought from the Korean Peninsula, at Japanese mines and factories to make up for labor shortages because most working-age Japanese men had been sent to battlefronts across Asia and the Pacific.
Following years of work collecting witness accounts and historical documents about the mine, the group started undersea searches for the victims’ remains last year.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi offered his condolences to all victims of the mine accident and said the government is following the police examination of the bones.
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