Photo/Illutration Hashima island, also known as “Battleship Island,” is where the Hashima Coal Mine, a component of a World Heritage site, is located. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Japan risked derailing tentative moves to repair badly soured relations with South Korea by effectively brushing aside concerns expressed by Seoul about a lack of information regarding wartime Korean workers at a World Heritage site in Nagasaki Prefecture.

The Hashima Coal Mine, located on a tiny speck of rock popularly known as “Battleship Island,” is part of the “Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution,” which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015.

Last year, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee expressed deep disquiet that the Japanese government had provided insufficient information about those brought from the Korean Peninsula when it was a Japanese colony to work at the coal mine. The unanimous resolution called on Tokyo to submit a report by Dec. 1 about what it intended to do to address the matter.

At a Dec. 2 news conference, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi disclosed that a report on the issue was submitted Nov. 30 to UNESCO.

However, the report simply reiterated the government’s intention to sincerely implement steps to address the concerns.

It repeated past explanations that labor mobilization measures during World War II covered all Japanese citizens, including those living on the Korean Peninsula because they were regarded as such under colonial rule imposed from 1910, according to an official at the Cabinet Secretariat handling the matter.

UNESCO is expected to disclose Japan’s report shortly and the World Heritage Committee will discuss the contents next year.

Approval for the Meiji industrial revolutions sites hit a roadblock when South Korea argued that Korean wartime laborers had been “forcibly brought” to some of the sites.

At the session of the World Heritage Committee where the decision was made to register the sites, Japan expressed its intention to implement appropriate measures so that the memory of those who perished at the Hashima coal mine would not be forgotten.

In 2020, the government opened the Industrial Heritage Information Center in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, where various components of the heritage site were displayed.

But South Korea took issue with testimony displayed at the center that said there was no discrimination against wartime laborers from the Korean Peninsula.

Seoul again raised the issue when Japan in February nominated ancient gold and silver mines on the island of Sado in Niigata Prefecture for inclusion in the World Heritage list.

South Korea argued that Japan had failed to adequately face its past of forcibly bringing workers to Japan from the Korean Peninsula and had not lived up to its past pledge to provide an adequate explanation.

Regarding the latest report, Hayashi said, “It clearly states how Japan has sincerely dealt with the resolution (of 2021). We intend to further improve the display.”

Education minister Keiko Nagaoka was asked at her Dec. 2 news conference about what effect the report would have on the Sado gold mine nomination. She said the government would move ahead with the process while consulting among the relevant agencies.

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