Bones, skull found by divers in the underwater mine in Japan, where more than 100 Korean forced workers died in World War II

The police said on Wednesday that a set of bones recovered in a wartime Mine in Japan are human remains, and a Japanese group that helps seek the remains said that they will surely belong to some 180 workers mostly forced Koreans who died in an accident in 1942.

Police said that their three bones exam and a skull found this week by Korean divers at the old site of the Pastei mine in the prefecture of Yamaguchi confirmed that all are human remains.

But the police said that their analysis could not determine if the three bones of the limbs and the skull belonged to the same person, their age or the moment of death.

The group, known as Kizamu Kai, said they are sure that the remains belong to the victims who died in the mine 83 years ago and that the discovery is a great impulse in their efforts to recover other remains of the 136 Korean forced workers and 47 Japanese workers killed in the collapse of the mine.

“I was waiting for this day,” said the Yoko Inoue group representative on Tuesday after the bones were found.

After the initial attempts were not successful, a June survey conducted by the group confirmed a path to the place where the remains were believed, Japan Times reported.

Bones recovery occurs only a few days after a weekend summit in Tokyo between Prime Minister Shigeru Ihiba and the president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, showing friendly ties between the two countries to cooperate in important challenges, such as regional security and trade, while avoiding historical differences.

The Pesei underwater mine began operating in 1914. In February 1942, part of the roof of a mine axis collapsed, flooding the mine and killing the 183 workers inside. The accident had been forgotten for a long time until a group of citizens began investigating in 1991, initially to erect a monument for victims and preserve the old mining site, including entrance and a ventilation axis.

Historians say that Japan used hundreds of thousands of Korean workers before and during World War II, including those brought by the force of the Korean Peninsula, in Japanese mines and factories to compensate for the shortage of work because most Japanese men of the working age had been sent to battle fronts in Asia and the Pacific.

After years of work collecting accounts of witnesses and historical documents on the mine, the group began looking for the underwater part of the victims’ remains last year.

Ishiba, who has recognized the aggression of the Japan war and has shown more sympathy towards Asian victims, nodded earlier this year for his government to listen to experts on how searches can be carried out safely.

The chief secretary of the Cabinet, Yoshimasa Hayashi, offered his condolences to all victims of the Mina accident and said the government is following the police examination of the bones. He said the government still has to obtain experience on the security of underwater searches for the remains on the site.

Kizamu Kai has followed searches on the site of the mine alone. The Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare, in charge of war remains, has been reluctant to help finance searches.

Critics say that the government of Japan has been reluctant to discuss atrocities in times of war. Which includes sexual abuse and slavery of Asian women, many of them Korean known as “comfort women” – And the Koreans mobilized and forced to work in Japan, especially in the last years of World War II.

The Japan government has maintained that all compensation problems in times of war between the two countries were resolved under a normalization treaty in 1965.

Korean compensation demands for Japan’s atrocities during their brutal colonial dominance have repeatedly tensioned relations between the two Asian neighbors. But since 2023, their ties have improved under the pressure of Washington to reserve differences that hinder crucial security cooperation as China’s threat grows in the region.

“This year marks 80 years since the end of the end of the war and 60 years since the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea,” said Yoko Inoue, co-corner of the civic group, to The Japan Times last month. “Bringing even part of the remains would be of historical importance for our peaceful friendship with people in the Korean Peninsula.”

• Second World War
• South Korea
• Japan