Slave-worker remains recall dark Japanese past

SAPPORO, Japan -- Stashed away in a cabinet, three boxes sat ignored inside a Buddhist temple for decades. Few knew that their contents were all that remained of slave laborers brought to imperial Japan and worked to death.

Now, after a three-year probe, priests at the Nishihonganji Temple believe they have matched the remains with the 101 Korean laborers, opening the way for the remains to be returned for a proper burial.

"We have set up a special committee to discuss how to get in contact with the relatives and what to do with the remains of the dead," priest Joshi Miake said Saturday at the temple in Sapporo, on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Historians said the three steel boxes hold one of the first and biggest collections of remains found in Japan, and that the find could lead to more like it. The temple said the remains match a registry of Korean forced laborers whose bodies were cremated and sent to the temple during World War II, though tests will be needed to verify that.

If confirmed, the finding could have deep repercussions.

Japan's military captured up to 800,000 Chinese, Koreans and others from Asian countries in the early 1900s and sent them to work in Japan's coal mines and ports, often under brutal conditions. Hundreds of thousands of others were forced into military service or sexual slavery for Japanese troops.

More than six decades later, Japan is only beginning to face that dark past as victims of its wartime brutalities come forward to tell their stories and ask for compensation in U.S. and Japanese courts.

Japan has refused to pay damages to individuals despite accusations at home and abroad that it has not atoned for its wartime brutalities. Officials say the issue was settled in postwar treaties.

The discovery of the remains comes at a sensitive time for relations between Japan and North Korea. The two sides are deadlocked in a new round of talks that began last month to establish diplomatic relations.

The North wants Tokyo to apologize for its colonization of the peninsula from 1910-1945 and compensate Pyongyang for atrocities. Tokyo has tried to shift focus on North Korea's kidnappings of Japanese during the 1970s and 80s. The find here could add new weight to the North's demand that Tokyo to atone for its own crimes.

Nishihonganji priest Hiroaki Wakiya said 10 of the dead laborers were from towns now located in North Korea, while the rest were from cities in the South.

During the early 1900s, many Japanese companies and mine operators who used the laborers sent remains of the dead to nearby temples. The remains at Nishihonganji were left there during the war by 11 construction and mining companies.

Originally stored in individual wooden boxes, the remains were dumped into three large steel boxes in the 1980s and 1990s, when the temple built an extension. Since then, the boxes have been kept in a cabinet next to other individual remains in the temple's north wing, where priests offer prayers daily.

Wakiya said the names of the dead were not known until 1997, when Sapporo-based Chizaki Industrial sent the temple a list of 101 Koreans forcibly taken to Japan, including 23 it employed. Nothing was done until three years ago, when temple officials launched a probe after priests reportedly complained the remains were being disrespected.

Chizaki Industrial officials weren't immediately available for comment. The company is the only company of the 11 wartime companies still operating

Yutaka Nishinarita, a professor at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, said the remains and the registry are among the most important artifacts of the slave labor legacy ever to surface.

"Until now, what has been missing is a list of people Japanese companies used for slave labor. This shows that there were lists and that means we can trace who worked where," said Nishinarita, an expert on the topic.

Temple officials were to meet Tuesday to discuss how to sort, identify and return the remains to relatives, Miake said.

But they admitted closure may be a long way off.

"It could be many years before we have completed the task," Miake said. "The ashes and other remains are so mixed up that it's impossible for us to know for sure what belong to whom."