By now it has surely dawned on Japan's political establishment, eager for issues of Japanese war accountability to fade away, that appointing Aso Taro to the post of foreign minister last fall was a major mistake. While Aso's provocative comments about Japanese imperialism and war conduct predated his tenure as the nation's top diplomat, the historical record of forced labor in Japan by Asians and Allied POWs is being newly thrust into the media spotlight.

Thousands of Korean labor conscripts were exploited for dangerous work in the northern Kyushu coalfields owned by Aso Mining Company between 1939 and 1945. Most Korean forced laborers never received the wages they earned; the money was deposited in the national treasury after the war and remains there today. The Aso family's coal profits helped bankroll the rise of the dominant political figure in early postwar Japan, Yoshida Shigeru, who was prime minister when Aso Mining and scores of other Japanese corporations quietly deposited the unpaid wages of some 700,000 Korean labor conscripts. Yoshida was also Aso Taro's grandfather.