Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island, is one of 23 old industrial facilities seeking UNESCO's recognition as world heritage "Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution" meant to illustrate Japan's rapid transformation from a feudal farming society into an industrial power at the end of the 19th century. UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is expected to approve the proposal during a meeting being held in Bonn, Germany, through July 9 after Japan and South Korea informally agreed on a promise to acknowledge, though it is unclear how, that Koreans were among the people who toiled at Gunkanjima and some other sites. The proposal makes no mention of the grim interlude when, toward the war's end, tens of thousands of Koreans, and also Chinese and foreign prisoners of war were forced to toil under dire conditions in Japanese factories and mines. The sites proposed to UNESCO for recognition include shipyards and steel works, ports, mines, industrial furnaces, docks and a huge crane still used at Mitsubishi's main shipyard in Nagasaki. Residents lived in a citadel of high-rise apartment buildings, the first in Japan built with steel-reinforced concrete, which stood behind sea walls that sometimes were no match for typhoons pounding in from the East China Sea. Eventually, undersea pipes funneled water and electricity to the about 5,000 residents living in what once was the most densely crowded place on the planet — a community with a cinema, hospital, school, swimming pool and many other amenities typical of life elsewhere in Japan. For Doutoku Sakamoto and others who once called Gunkanjima home, the designation could lend deeper meaning for their own displacement in 1974, when Mitsubishi closed and sealed the mine and vacated the island as Japan's national energy policy shifted toward greater reliance on oil imports. Joo is among former Korean laborers who are suing Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., the company that
Comment on Japan's UNESCO heritage bid draws ire over past labor abuse
By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press, San Antonio Express-News: Business
Tue, 06/30/2015 - 5:58pm
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