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Chinese Forced Labor, the Japanese Government and the Prospects for Redress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

William Underwood
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The practice was known as “laborer hunting,” and on that June 1944 afternoon 28-year-old Liu Zhongtang became the prey. Abducted at bayonet point by Japanese Army soldiers from his North China farm field, Liu was first taken to their local base camp for torture and interrogation, and then plunged into the brutal feeder system for Chinese forced labor in Japan. At one point he was held in an underground pit covered with wooden boards before ending up in the wretched Tanggu concentration camp on the coast. Detention conditions were so bad that 812 captives died between the Chinese coast and their intended work sites in Japan, in Liu's case the Ashio copper mine in Tochigi Prefecture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 7 , July 2005 , e9
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

References

Endnotes

[1] Liu was interviewed by NHK. See Maboroshi no Gaimusho Hokokusho: Chugokujin kyosei renko kyosei rodo no kiroku. NHK Publishing: 1994, pp. 124-42. This book is also the primary source for FMR-based data about CFL.

[2] The source for all information and quotations from the MOFA archives is “Gaimusho ‘gokuhi’ bunsho ga kataru Chugokujin kyosei renko kyosei rodo jiken no sengoshi: kokusai hanzai inmetsu kosaku no kazukazu to heiwa yuko wo negau naigai seron.” Fukuoka: Liigaru Bukkusu, 2003. The 32-page booklet excerpts documents submitted to the Fukuoka High Court by plaintiffs’ lawyers and is online.

[3] NHK Publishing, 1994.

[4] Along with the MOFA archives, the source for information about early CFL redress is Sugihara Toru, Chugokujin kyosei renko. Iwanami Shoten, 2002.

[5] Utsumi, Aiko. “Japanese racism, war and the POW experience,” in Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So (eds.), War and state terrorism: the United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the long twentieth century. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004, p. 122.

[6] Another example from this same period of the Japanese Red Cross’ failure to maintain independence from political interference involved its cooperation with MOFA in sending ethnic Koreans from Japan to North Korea. See Tessa Morris-Suzuki (2004), “Japan's hidden role in the ‘return’ of zainichi Koreans to North Korea,” Japan Focus.

[7] Utsumi 2004, p. 139.

[8] The statement is available at the Japan House of Representatives homepage.