Enerugī-shi kenkyū [Studies in Energy History] Volume 22 Offprint (March 2007)

Edited and published by the Kyushu University Manuscript Library, Business and Economics Section (Formerly the Coal Research Materials Center)

 

 

Introduction of Source:

Reading “Strange Mountain: A Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine”: Rejecting Lies, Fabrications, Misunderstandings, and Hearsay

 

Mitsui Yamano Mining Staff: Yōichi Sai

Yoshio Atobe

Commentary: Munehiro Miwa

 

Commentary: Yoshio Atobe’s Posthumous Manuscript

Munehiro Miwa

 

The posthumous manuscript left by Yoshio Atobe, entitled “Reading Strange Mountain: A Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine: Rejecting Lies, Fabrications, Misunderstandings, and Hearsay” was prepared in response to the publication of Ikyō no yama: Mitsui Yamanokō kyōsei rōdō no kiroku [Strange Mountain: A Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine] (Kaichōsha, 2000), an edited collection of interviews for the most part conducted by the non-fiction author Eidai Hayashi and Tomio Taketomi. The paper was written with the express intention of setting straight the “real facts about a true coal mine,” informed by the author’s desperate feeling “As someone once employed at Mitsui Yamano Mine, as someone who has pride in that mine, [that he could not] bear for such a book to be talked about in the public sphere or by posterity as a true representation of the coal mine.” Atobe felt that he “had to do something,” for fear that “the suggestion in such a biased book that such terrible acts had been committed at the coal mines in wartime—and at the Mitsui Yamano coal mine in particular—even if it were mistaken, once published, would be accepted as the truth by those who do not know.” The paper was compiled from the record of a round-table discussion moderated by Yōichi SAI.

Atobe and Sai were central to the formation of the Coal Industry Materials Study Group (Sekitan sangyō shiryō chōsa kenkyūkai), through which they pursued fact-finding research in the belief of clarifying truth from falsehood by gathering as many as they could those veteran mine workers who used Korean, Chinese, and POW laborers during the war, [out of the idea that] who have experienced these circumstances first-hand would best know the truth of matters, and their accounts should carry the most weight. This manuscript is a result of that effort. The sections “1. Introduction” and “I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to” relate the effects of coverage of the coal mines by the mass media and describe the image of coal mines that has spread to the general public as a result. Looking at the strength at the influence of the mass media, whose broadcasts of “coal mine barracks that became abandoned buildings with the closure of the mine” and “older unemployed laborers who are difficult to re-employ” have stained the entirety of coal-mining society with “negative images” that reflect only part of the truth, Atobe “felt it to be something terrible even now, after all this time,” causing him to grind his teeth at its discrepancies with the image he held as—a coal man who was brought up in a coal-mining society that had been awash with human kindness.

With coal-mining officials having been scattered across the country, the Study Group brought together six former coal mine officials to hold a round-table discussion. The moderator of the discussion was Yōichi Sai, a former detainee who had spent three years in Siberia. While no transcript or recording of the round-table discussion has yet been uncovered, we can glean some of the content of the discussion from this manuscript. As a part of the discussion, it was apparently pointed out that Korean laborers were allowed freedom of action. Based on the personal experience of the participants, the discussion raised suspicions and contradictions in the arbitrary commentary on photographs and other content in Strange Mountain, pointing out the lies, fabrications, misunderstandings, and hearsay reported by Taketomi and Hayashi, neither of whom “had any firsthand experience of the coal mine and as such cannot know the actual circumstances of labor in the mine or the actual situation for the Koreans, Chinese laborers, or POWS in wartime.” In calm and careful strokes, the paper paints a rebuttal to the boilerplate and bromides of “labor intensification” (rōdō kyōka), “Koreans for dangerous duties,” “every day a funeral,” “being forced to work until dawn,” “Korean escapes,” and “forced migration” (kyōsei renkō) advanced in books dealing with forced migration such as Shashin man’yōroku: Chikuhō 2—Ōinaru hi (jō) [A Record in 10,000 Photographs: Chikuhō 2—The Towering Inferno (Part 1)] edited by Hidenobu Ueno and Kunje Cho (1984, Ashi Shobō), Seisan sarenai Shōwa: Chōsenjin kyōsei renkō no kiroku [Unpaid Debts of Shōwa: A Record of Korean Forced Migration] by Eidai Hayashi (photographs and text) and Sōji Takasaki (commentary) (1990, Iwanami Shoten). Whereas Hayashi points out the phrase “to prevent escape” on the blueprints for the accommodations provided for “Peninsulars” (hantōjin, i.e., Koreans) as though he had found a smoking gun, Atobe points out that the same board fences were also placed at the boundaries of camps used by single Japanese men, showing that these can be interpreted in any way depending on one’s preconceptions. And while he goes on to list inconsistencies in Taketomi’s description of the process by which he acquired these blueprints, we will not mention these any further here. As blueprints and drawings of coal mine lodgings from various parts of Japan are still extant, further research will sooner or later no doubt prove the relative merits of Hayashi’s argument and the description in Atobe’s posthumous manuscript. Atobe’s manuscript states clearly that the accommodations provided for Koreans and for single Japanese were by and large identical facilities.

Moreover, Atobe also specifically points out lies, misunderstandings, and hearsay in the recollections described by John Baxter of his time as a mechanical engineer at the Mitsui Yamano Mine, published as Not Much of a Picnic: Memoirs of a Conscript & Japanese Prisoner of War, 1941-1945 (Trowbridge: FJ Baxter, 1995; translated into Japanese by Tadahisa Sekima and published by Koresawa Insatsu, 1997). Based on personal experience on the ground, this counterargument easily cleared up the credible descriptions of a prisoner of war assigned to an electrical workshop. The seemingly plausible descriptions of a prisoner of war who did not actually experience the mine underground cannot pass muster with miners who are well-versed with the actual site. Atobe states that “this is something we can say as people who are personally knowledgeable about the site at that time, but when the general populace, who are ignorant of the facts, read this book, they will believe what is written to be the truth,” which he concludes to be “something fearful indeed.”

There is an appeal to an attitude that pursues the truth and refutes flagrant distortions and fabrications, such as the welcome reminder that “we must not critique times of emergency [such as war] from the normal perspective of peacetime.” Atobe’s appeal to his reader wells forth from sentences that course with zeal. I hope that many readers will carefully read Yoshio Atobe’s posthumous manuscript, to learn the facts of the coal mines, untrammeled by falsehood. Also written in this paper, is Atobe’s recollection, on being hospitalized with injuries suffered in a gas explosion at the Yamano Mine in 1965, that “accidents are things that happen in the blind spots of human beings.” In the text, we will read the story of a friendship from this time in hospital.

After the closure of the mine, Atobe was employed by the Mitsui Mine Vertical Tunnel Excavation Corporation in 1972. In his later years, he served on the Inatsuki Town History Compilation Committee, and passed away in July 2004 at the age of 78.

The manuscript is published in a volume written by Masayuki Satani entitled Tankō no shinjitsu to eikō: Chōsenjin kyōsei renkō no kyokō [The truth and glory of the coal mines: The fiction of the forced migration of Koreans] (Nihon Kaigi Fukuoka Chikuhō Shibu, 2005). Reading the text, I felt that I wanted to see it reprinted in its entirety in Studies in Energy History, and was fortunately able to prepare a typescript after obtaining the consent of the author’s second son Osamu Atobe. I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Satani for his efforts and to Mr. Atobe for agreeing. If a record of the round-table discussion is uncovered, I hope to publish it in the next issue.

Incidentally, included among wartime court records from 1943, 1944, and 1945 that I was recently sent by a researcher studying the Zainichi Korean (Korean nationals living in Japan) issue were materials regarding judgements against Korean laborers who were forcibly repatriated after being convicted of second offences (e.g., theft and robbery) while serving a suspended sentence. I was forced to ponder over the question of what it meant that Korean laborers serving a suspended sentence had sufficient freedom of movement that they were able to commit further crimes.

At the risk of derailing my commentary, according to the received wisdom, labor mobilization can broadly be divided into “free recruitment,” “official arrangement,” and “conscription,” with legally enforceable conscription being carried out from September 1944 to May 1945. Unless discussion of the theory of so-called “Korean forced migration” is carried out with terms that are clearly defined, it will be used in empty political slogans and by political groups, or as an outlet for a measly sense of justice on the part of frustrated scholars and researchers with narrow mindset. During the Pacific War, workers were scarce, as were civil engineering workers and agricultural labor during the agricultural season. I believe that the existence of such a labor market would have supported no end of volunteer migrants and stowaways, perhaps as many as twice the amount of labor mobilization.

Although for verification purposes, I obtained and read a copy of the descriptions in the junior high school social studies textbooks examined in 1996, these go beyond the level of bias, and are themselves fabrications.

I would like to close my commentary with the old Chinese saying:

“When one dog barks for nothing, all other dogs bark in earnest.”

 

Addendum

I have corrected any clear errors with kanji conversions or other typographical mistakes. I have supplemented the text with some punctuation marks and line breaks, and enumerated major sections with Chinese numerals [Roman numerals in the English translation]. Errors in quotation have been corrected with reference to the original sources. I have not been able to find photographs or a record of the round-table discussion. I settled on the current title since the title of the original manuscript was rather unwieldy: “Reading ‘strange mountain’: Not phony! ‘This was a true coal mine!’ An account by former coal miners who reject lies, fabrications, misunderstandings and hearsay.”

 

 

 

 

Reading “Strange Mountain: A Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine”: Rejecting Lies, Fabrications, Misunderstandings, and Hearsay

 

Mitsui Yamano Mine Supervisor Yōichi Sai

Yoshio Atobe

I.               Introduction

Background of the Idea to Leave Behind a Record of “A True Coal Mine”

More than half a century has now passed since Japan’s defeat in the war. And while it has risen miraculously from that scorched earth, growing so that it now leads the world in terms of personal income and is the second-largest economic power after the United States in terms of GNP, the path it followed closely resembles that of pre-war Japan, when it staged the Meiji Restoration to construct a modern state and leapt onto the world stage as a major national power. Among Asian countries, only Japan was able to rank alongside the world’s great powers for fifty years as a modern state without being colonized. What is the root cause of that breakthrough? I believe that it was due to the national character cultivated by the Japanese race over the ages. Looking back on the past half-century, I believe that 1960 was a major turning point. Center stage that year was the conflict over the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan (known as Anpo in Japan), when the streets around the National Diet were awash with noise as though it were the eve of a revolution, while in economic circles the dispute over the Miike coal mine, regarded as a decisive battle between total capital and total labor, was coming to a head. The Japan Teachers’ Union (Nikkyōso) was also at the height of its powers during this period. Compared to the Meiji Restoration, just as the Taisei Hokan (formal restoration of political authority to the Emperor) by the Edo shogunate was a turning point for the success of the Restoration, I believe 1960 was a year that saw a decisive settlement to the stand-off between progressives and conservatives; the left wing was routed over both Miike and Anpo, and the future of Japan was decided. From that point onward, every industry strove to improve its productivity, and at the time, together with the Japan Coal Miners Union (Tanrō), the Japan Public Sector Union (Kankōrō)—which enjoyed a reputation as the most powerful union—underwent sequential division and privatization. For the general public, too, comparing the nationalized rail period to Japan Rail post-privatization, offered a glimpse into which was the proper and true expression of human society, as would become evident in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a complete defeat of left-wing ideology. The telegraph, telephone, and tobacco industries were also privatized. In the private sector, the superiority of technology backed by the traditional Japanese spirit of artisanship, such as automobiles, electronics, and machine tools swept the globe, decisively occupying the top position. And while I’m no Shintarō Ishihara, it has even been implied that the success of the incredible high-tech weapons deployed by the USA in the Gulf War was made possible by Japanese-made components. We Japanese have no need to boast, but we should feel confidence and pride. Meanwhile, when I look at the coal mines, shortly before the Miike dispute, facing the energy revolution (i.e., the conversion from solid coal to liquid petroleum), Japan’s coal mines were being buffeted by the storm of closure after closure. Of Japan’s coal mines, which boast the most advanced technology in the world in terms of the subterranean mining of coal, only the Ikeshima coal mine in Nagasaki Prefecture and Hokkaido’s Pacific coal mine remain. Even the town of Inatsuki, which once prospered on coal, with the final closure of the Yamano coal mine (in 1973), is a coal-mining town no longer. At its peak, the town boasted a population of 46,000 souls, was home to coal mines belonging to the “central capital” firms of Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Nippon Steel, and Nippon Tangyo. In terms of railways, despite its modest size, Inatsuki was home to four stations—Yamano, Akasaka (Shimo-Kamoo), Kamoo, and Urushio—that kept the town bustling with vitality. However, the vicissitudes of fortune being the way of the world, while not the sound of the bell of Jetavana [which echoes the impermanence of all things], the once prosperous coal mines of Inatsuki were unable to withstand the tide of the energy revolution, and from the late 1950s began to be sequentially rationalized, made into new companies, and see their management transferred. In 1973, the town lost its final mine with the closure of the Yamano mine, extinguishing the light of the town’s coal-mine lamps completely. During this time, a large majority of my colleagues went to Tokyo or the Keihanshin (Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe) region for new jobs, but those of us who stayed behind, having decided that our fates would be linked the coal mine to the end just clenched our fists and crossed our arms with only a single thought in our minds. Namely, this was the complete and utter opposition between our own sense of the coal mine era and the image of coal mines held on part of the general public. As the mines closed down one after another, naturally their workers also lost their jobs. As the number of people who found new jobs increased, vacancies also increased in the tenements like teeth falling out, and the company housing lost its vibrance. Surely this had value as news. Since 1965, the television has broadcast nothing but footage of the coal mine housing that was abandoned with the closure of the mines and the circumstances of older miners who have had difficulties finding new employment. Sakubei Yamamoto’s coal mine paintings have caught the zeitgeist and become explosively popular. While these paintings certainly have value as a history of the coal mines, unfortunately they are paintings of the early days of coal mining, namely the Meiji, Taishō, and very early Shōwa periods, and what is more, they are paintings of small coal mines. In particular, we see a near naked man in a fundoshi loincloth squatting in a thin coal seam, mining coal with a pickaxe, while a woman in a single koshimaki kimono underskirt pulls a small wooden coal truck (sura). Famously, they would have had a single handheld oil lamp for light, and this image has led the general populace to believe that the coal mining was one of the lowest occupations—a dirty, dangerous, and difficult job in a dark place under the ground. And it is inevitable that they should think so, for it is reported as such in every form of media. In addition, by the late 1970s, the issue of the forced migration, forced labor, abuse, and escape of Koreans was now the topic of books and being published as photograph collections, with the issue of the military comfort women adding insult to the injuries of forced migration and forced labor. The image of the coal mines was now the absolute worst. Those who, like us, had worked in the large coal mines (e.g., the Mitsui Yamano coal mine) had felt that “the coal-mining life was great, with delicate humanity, and because it brought people together from all over, there was a sense of freedom, with no sense of discrimination. We were proud that our educational level was a notch or two above others in the local society.” Yet because of the erroneous coverage in the mass media, the general public’s idea of “coal mines” was only of places characterized by “dark, dangerous, dirty, and enforced labor; by violence, poverty, and a low level of education…” For us, seeing that kind of coverage take place, every time a book was published emphasizing only the negative aspects, we felt like grinding our teeth at the discrepancies with the actual situation at the coal mines as they had truly been.

 

I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to

I recently heard the following kind of story. The eldest son of Mr. T who is a junior colleague of mine graduated from Yamaguchi University and now works for a company in Osaka. The son’s daughter (T’s granddaughter), who is a six-year student of elementary school, is attending a school that offers Dōwa education, with a sixty-something year old lady teaching a class under the title “I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to” [the traditional ordering of the Japanese syllabary]. As this old woman was from a Burakumin settlement, her family was poor, and she hadn’t even been allowed to go to school. From the time she was little, she had worked in a coal mine, picking coal and sorting coal at the pithead, and until the time the mine closed, she had been unable to write even a single character. Heading to Osaka, she learned of a literacy class (shikiji gakkyū) where she began learning characters the first time, and eventually learned to read and write. Naming the class “I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to,” seemed to emphasize the theme, that people from Burakumin settlements were discriminated against and not allowed to go to school, and that coal mines were places where even such poor, ignorant people were able to work. After the speech was over, when the class teacher asked “did any of your grandfathers or grandmothers ever work in the coal mine?” Mr. T’s granddaughter was the only one who raised her hand. When the granddaughter came back to her family’s home town during the summer break, her grandfather occasionally used English in the course of their conversations about various things. And when the granddaughter said “Can you speak English, Grandpa?” he inquired “What makes you ask?” which apparently led her to bring up the story of “I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to.” His own granddaughter had got it into her head that the coal mines were places where uneducated people worked. Since her father, T’s son, had been raised at the coal mine and gone to university from the coal mine company housing, he would have known something about the coal mine, but I suppose she never spoke to her father about it. And although she often visited her father’s home town, it seems she had no idea that her grandfather’s house had been the coal mine’s company housing. Since Mr. T, like me, was one of the group who were chagrined at the popular image of coal mines, he said to his daughter “Next time I come to Osaka, tell your teacher to come visit me, and I’ll tell the story of how the coal mines really were.” And it seems that next time he went to Osaka, that’s what he did. And of course as materials he brought Yamamoto Sakubei’s illustrated collection of coal mine stories and photographs of the inside and outside of the mine as many as he owned. The first thing he said was “The house where I live now was the company housing where I lived in the coal mine era. I got it cheap when the company sold it off (when the Yamano coal mine closed, its company houses were sold off to the employees). How big do you think it might be?” Although he didn’t get an answer, he apparently felt the teacher would only have had a negative impression, and was probably thinking of the dilapidated and abandoned tenements shown on television. And the teacher was apparently surprised when T reported that the house was about 40 tsubo (132 square meters) on a lot measuring 100 tsubo (330 square meters). “The 100 tsubo are the same as they were, and although I rebuilt the house when I joined the new company, at the time it was sold off it measured 31.5 tsubo (104 square meters). Everyone in the neighborhood has houses of about the same size. And of course our housing was pretty generous, being staff housing, even the miners’ housing was more than 20 or 30 tsubo. I worked for the Yamano mine office of Mitsui Kōzan until the mine was closed. Mitsui Kōzan had three mines in Hokkaido and three big mines in Kyushu. Of the three mines in Kyushu, Yamano was the smallest, the Mitsui Tagawa coal mine was about twice as big as Yamano, and the Mitsui Miike coal mine was as big again as the Tagawa mine, which is to say more than four times as big as the Yamano coal mine, as well as the biggest coal mine in Japan. You will no doubt be aware that Ōmuta was the ‘castle town’ that grew up around the Mitsui Miike mine. And even though Yamano was the smallest of the Mitsui mines in Kyushu, it was one of the leading coal mines in the Chikuhō coal field, employing as many as 8,000 people at its peak. In contrast to that old lady’s ‘I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to’ story, you will also be aware that since the pre-war period, prevalence of compulsory education in Japan has approached 100%, one of the finest in the world. We have Burakumin people in Inatsuki, as well, but almost all of them should have received compulsory education. Especially in the coal mine areas, where life is easy, parents would have to be crazy not to send their children to school. This is not a discrimination or a Burakumin problem. It was long said that if you could work in the coal mines, you could eat, so many people of all kinds came to the mines from all over Japan. This meant that life in the coal mine tenements was truly liberating. Your neighbors were like family, and there was hardly anything like discrimination. Even if someone came from a Burakumin settlement, if he was excellent, you were promoted to the staff the same as anyone else. (At the Mitsui coal mines, before the war, staff members were known as ‘officials’). At the drinking parties we held after staff meetings we had no problem exchanging glasses of sake with staff members from Burakumin backgrounds. To that extent, there was no discrimination at the coal mines.”

Also, the area where I live was known as the Edasaka staff housing, a residential area for a top-ranking elite group whose level of education and lifestyle was high even for Inatsuki. The Yamano coal mine would certainly have employed graduates of the pre-war Imperial Universities variously as at least one technician and one clerk, and they would have been side by side with graduates from private universities and from the higher technical schools and vocational schools of the pre-war education system…. [Bear in mind that the pre-war rate of entering higher grade schools was far behind current rates of university entrance]. There were even several individuals who had quit their jobs as schoolteachers around the end of the war to take up new positions at the coal mine. Since you teachers only know the negative side of the mining life, it’s natural that you wouldn’t be aware of the actual situation in the coal mines in those day, but Sakubei Yamamoto’s famous paintings of the coal mines are paintings of small-scale mines in the Meiji, Taishō, and early Shōwa periods, which are worlds apart from the coal mine where we worked from the time we joined Mitsui Yamano until the mine closed down. (Here he showed photographs from the Mitsui Yamano coal mine, including those of the No. 1 Shaft Tower, shaft garden, underground train, the framing situation for the mine path, hydraulic steel pillars at the coal-mining site, and conveyor). While the situation underground was as it appeared in the photographs, for many years from the early 1950s onwards, Mitsui Kōzan was a top pick in the university graduate application rankings. Hard to even imagine nowadays, eh? Mitsui Yamano’s corporate track team was a prestigious track team, on a par with Nippon Steel’s. In the marathon in particular, we had Shinzō Koga—far and away the best marathon runner of his day—and we also produced several Olympic marathon runners, as well. We were also active in terms of cultural activities: newspapers were published and delivered to all families twice a month, and a variety of hobby groups were heavily subscribed. At the company-wide level, we had things like a mountain shrine festival, a Mountain-wide athletic tournament, a Bon festival dance performance, and a fireworks festival, and there was also a movie theater operated directly by the company. The best thing from a lifestyle perspective was that the rent, water, and utilities at the company housing were all covered free of charge. It was plain as day that life was easy at the coal mine. Just like legions or divisions in the army, the big coal mines had organizations that took care of everything themselves. For example, the Mitsui Yamano Hospital was a general hospital with departments of internal medicine, surgery, otolaryngology, ophthalmology, dentistry, and pediatrics.

As if the coal mine is synonyms with the “I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to” story, you would probably think coal-mine workers were less educated than the general populace. As I mentioned earlier, however, many people had a high level of education, and in order to become a member of the technical staff, you first had to pass a national examination. In particular, in order to become a mine manager or safety supervisor, one had to pass the Class A Senior Safety Engineer examination. This exam covered seven topics, namely (1) mine safety legislation, (2) underground safety, (3) ground safety, (4) electrical safety, (5) machine safety, (6) anti-explosives safety, and (7) mine pollution safety, and one was supposed to pass all of these subjects within three years of taking the examination. Since the coal mine company became a construction company after the mine closure, I signed on with that company next, and successively took and passed national examinations as necessary. For example, there was Class 1 Architect, Class 1 Civil Engineer and Construction Management Engineer, and Type 2 Sewage Engineer, but the most difficult of these was the Class A senior safety Engineer examination. This was because the pass rate was only around five percent. To that extent, the coal mine was not a place where work could be done by people of low achievement, as in the general public view…” After hearing these various stories, the teacher expressed his shock, saying eagerly that “You’ve changed my opinion. I guess we have to listen to the stories of those with life experience, who know well the way things really were.” Anyway, that’s what T told me, but I also felt that he, too, probably got things off his chest.

I’ve had an experience like that myself. My eldest son studied at Kagoshima University and married a girl from Kagoshima. Her father was on the staff of the national railway and lived in the official company residence. Once the marriage was settled, my wife and I went to Kagoshima to pay our respects, but the first thing that struck me was how small the housing was. None of the staff housing at the coal mine was that small. Then, the young woman’s parents said to me “We hope you will not take offence, but since you work in the coal mine, we took the liberty of looking into your background. With all the coverage you see in the newspapers and on television, we were a little worried.” A few days later we had the bride and her parents over to our house to return the favor. First of all, they were surprised at the size of our house, “This was the company residence for the coal mine? It’s so spacious!” And I still have a strong impression of their lasting amazement after I took them on a tour of the No. 1 and No.2 shafts at the Yamano coal mine; “This kind of place was a coal mine?” It had been at complete odds with their own preconceived notions about what coal mines were like.

The above has provided examples of the 180-degree difference between the view harbored by the general public (which is nothing but the coverage they see on television and the mass media, biased to one side) and that of those who actually lived the coal-mining life. Truly, I still feel that there is something terrible in the strength of the mass media’s influence.

 

Strange Mountain: A Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine

As I mentioned in the previous section, the mass media and television coverage around the time that the coal mines were being closed one after another, emphasized only their bleak aspects, which ended up planting an entirely mistaken and negative image in the public mind that differed from the coal mines as they had actually been. Furthermore, the photograph collections and reports of forced migration and forced labor published by people like Hidenobu Ueno, Seiji Yoshida, and Eidai Hayashi only added fuel to the fire. Those of us who actually worked in the coal mines were indignantly lamenting that “No! It wasn’t like that!” but have had no means of setting the record straight until today. Now, this year (2000), we’ve seen the publication of a book entitled Strange Mountain: A Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine (hereinafter abbreviated as Strange Mountain). The book is edited by Tomio Taketomi and Eidai Hayashi, and the marketing copy on the wraparound band claiming “Previously unpublished! Wartime coal mines as depicted in internment camp blueprints,” and popping with sensational text saying “state-sponsored labor hunts in China and on the Korean peninsula, cruel forced labor, abuse, escapes, and butchery in the coal mines, and then the defeat…. Graphic testimony and written accounts from mine officers, special higher police officers, and POWs, as well as drawings of the Mitsui Yamano Mine internment camp that should have been incinerated, reveal the actual state of the coal mine in wartime.”

As it purported to be a “Record of Forced Labor at Mitsui Yamano Mine,” as someone who had once been employed at Mitsui Yamano Mine, I was really interested in it and immediately purchased a copy and read it all in one sitting. The content of the book centered on interviews about the actual situation with regard to so-called forced migration and forced labor involving Koreans, Chinese workers, and POWs during the war as told by those who had been involved at the time, which were then written up as prose by Eidai Hayashi.

Eleven testimonies (collected and recorded by Eidai Hayashi), three written accounts, five other materials, blueprint drawings (lodgings for the Koreans and internment camps for the Chinese workers and POWs), and numerous photographs, which were Hayashi’s specialty. One of the written accounts was a paper that had been published in the Journal of the Kyushu Mine Association by Kunio Tsukiashi, who supervised the first working face at Mitsui Yamano Mine to be worked by Korean laborers, and this is something that we feel as correct from our viewpoint as mining engineers. The other two accounts were extracts and abridgements of books by former British POWs prepared with the assistance of translators, but these books were extremely full of hearsay and misunderstandings. I will point out the offending passages shortly.

My feelings immediately after reading Strange Mountain were as follows:

• Were these editors actually Japanese?
• With such a report, which selectively emphasized only the negatives and completely omitted all of the positive aspects of the coal mine, would the younger generations of Chikuhō really be able to have pride in their local area, as the editors suggest?
• This testimony, which was based on interviews and recorded in writing, was selectively edited and written up based on Hayashi’s pre-existing way of thinking. Contextually, it is the same as the material on forced migration and forced labor published in the past. It is what you could call biased.
• The discussion highlights only skewed examples that are diametrically opposed to the appreciation felt toward the coal mine era by the vast majority of coal miners (which Hayashi himself alludes to in his Postscript).
• The book features testimonies that are completely opposed to each other in the same book. Did the editors confirm these? Did they polish them?
• As someone once employed at Mitsui Yamano Mine, as someone who has pride in that mine, I cannot bear for such a book to be talked about in the public sphere or by posterity as a true representation of the coal mine. I felt strongly that I had to do something.

 

The town of Inatsuki flourished thanks to the coal mine. Museums dedicated to coal have been built in the cities and towns that were once home to major coal mines. In Fukuoka Prefecture, coal museums the cities of Ōmuta, Tagawa, Naokata and the town of Miyata [merged with the town of Wakamiya to become Miyawaka City as of 2006] each have their own distinctive features. In Inatsuki, as well, we also collected coal-related materials to some degree, and somewhat belatedly planned to make full use of these and create a coal museum to convey to our children’s and grandchildren’s generations that “Inatsuki is a town that owed its prosperity to coal!” Regrettably, the town had to budget carefully after the collapse of the bubble economy, and had no choice but to shelve the idea of building a museum. However, while these coal industry materials are still together in one place, in order to collect as much data as possible to leave to future generations, we currently have a Coal Industry Materials Study Group. I immediately had the members of our group read through this book, Strange Mountain, whereupon we arrived at the following conclusion:

 

The Mitsui Yamano coal mine was once the main industry for Inatsuki; the suggestion in such a biased book that such terrible acts had been committed at the coal mines in wartime—and at the Mitsui Yamano coal mine in particular—even if it were mistaken, once published, would be accepted as the truth by those who do not know. For the sake of the honor of Inatsuki and the Mitsui Yamano coal mine, as well, the real facts about a true coal mine need to be left behind. Accordingly, the Coal Industry Materials Study Group will take the lead in attempting to investigate whether or not there was any truth to the “cruel forced labor, abuse, escapes, and butchery in the coal mines” of Koreans, Chinese laborers, and POWs during the war at the heart of Strange Mountain. In particular, neither of the editors, Taketomi or Hayashi, will have had any firsthand experience of the coal mine and as such cannot know the actual circumstances of labor in the mine or the actual situation for the Koreans, Chinese laborers, or POWS in wartime. In addition, the text by Eidai Hayashi contains many incorrect passages that would be immediately evident to anyone with experience in the mine. Those who have experienced these circumstances first-hand would best know the truth of matters, and their accounts should carry the most weight. Accordingly, let us gather as many as we can from those veteran mine workers who used Korean, Chinese, and POW laborers during the war. As individuals, unfortunately, we have nowhere to have our say. As a study group, then, we very much need to have a round-table discussion about what it was like at the time—about how things truly were.

 

We quickly set about finding people who had made use of Koreans, Chinese laborers, and POWs during the war. Unfortunately, however, twenty-seven years had already passed since the closure of the Mitsui Yamano coal mine, and most of the former workers had found new jobs in Tokyo or the Keihanshin region. Not only that, but as we are talking about wartime, even those who would have been 20 years old at the end of the war would already be 75 years old. Those of us who are still alive and well are becoming fewer in number. Eventually we brought together six individuals and were able to hold a round-table discussion. In the next section, I describe the details of what came up at the round-table. I would like to add that this is the transcript of a taped recording, just as it was spoken at the round-table, and not reportage based on interviews like that produced by Hayashi.

 

----

 

 

 

                                                     II.               Round-Table Discussion on “Foreign Laborers at Mitsui Yamano during the War”

held on March 24, 2000

 

[Neither the transcript nor a recording of the round-table discussion has been uncovered to date—Miwa]

 

III.               After the Round-Table Discussion

What did you make of this round-table discussion by former coal-mining men about foreign laborers at Mitsui Yamano in wartime? I expect you have noticed that it was quite the opposite of the account given in Strange Mountain.

Sai, who served as the moderator of the round-table discussion, once spent three years detained in Siberia. Learning for the first time of the actual conditions of the work required of Koreans, Chinese laborers, and POWS at the Mitsui Yamano coal mine during the war, he said “the rooms and facilities they were provided with were… those POWs were almost in paradise compared to those of us who were detained in Siberia.”

Whereas Strange Mountain describes how Koreans were subjected to forced migration, were compelled to carry out arduous labor, and were housed in lodgings that were little different than concentration camps, this was completely not the feeling at the round-table discussion. In addition, it was clearly demonstrated that their actions, as well, were free. Here, I state a fact that no one in the world can disagree with. Currently, in major cities in major countries, is there anywhere other than Japan where women can comfortably walk around in the middle of the night? Moreover, this is not limited to our contemporary peaceful postwar Japan. It was like this during the war, and before the war, and even apparently also in the Edo period. The law-abiding spirit and rectitude of discipline of the Japanese is our national character. Yet even in our peaceful and safe Japan, murder and crime is not unknown. But what would happen if we kept reporting and writing one-sidedly about only those murders and crimes, and moreover blew them out of all proportion? The Nanking massacre, forced migration, the military comfort women issue—these are all just the same. Those who do not know any better will inevitably get the idea that Japan is the most brutal and dangerous country in the world. And the exact same thing is true for the actual state of the coal mines.

“If only one person in a hundred complains, there is a method of writing as though the person complaining were representative of a hundred people. Even if only one percent of people complain, if we gather only the grievances of those who complain, it will seem that something terrible has been done. But the fact is that the remaining ninety-nine percent of people benefit from it. Without such a view of things, one cannot fairly evaluate historical facts.” Reading this way of looking things, this way of thinking, I feel it accords precisely with my own motto for life; indeed, even neighborhood associations and other such groups always seem to have one or two naysayers. However, for things to proceed according to the will of the majority, is that not democracy? Is that not human society? It was this logic that came to my mind immediately after reading Strange Mountain.

At the same time, I wondered whether the editors were really Japanese. This was because I immediately recalled the famous story from the Analects in which Confucius, asked what he thought of a son who reported his father’s crime of stealing a sheep to the officials, answered that “the upright thing is for the father to conceal the crime for the sake of his son, and for the son to conceal the crime for the sake of his father.” Is this not human nature? Why would a Japanese writer write up the evils of one percent of Japanese people as though they were the crimes of one hundred percent? Do not ninety-nine percent of the people involved in the coal mine recall the days of the coal mine with fondness? Was even this round-table discussion of former coal mine men not overflowing with that sentiment? This is the truth of it.

In the subtitle of this article, I’ve written “rejecting lies, fabrications, misunderstandings, and hearsay,” and this was also pointed out at the round-table discussion. Due to its nature, the round-table wasn’t able to discuss this in detail, but below I would like to elaborate this point in a little more detail.

The subject of Strange Mountain is constituted by the reported testimonies. While I admire the expressiveness of the editors and the felicity of the text, it is something that has been pulled together by selectively editing the stories of the witnesses in a certain direction based on the biased intentions of the editors. Unfortunately, the editors had no experience with coal mines, especially underground, and it is perhaps for this reason that it contains so many lies and fabrications, and is written in such a blithely contradictory manner. In the following, I will point out the contradictions in the principal items only.

 

Regarding Forced Migration and Forced Labor

During the war, I had the experience of working alongside the so-called foreign laborers – the Koreans, Chinese laborers, and POWs. However, the publications concerned with forced migration that began appearing in the late 1970s were too rife with distortions and fabrications. Furthermore, even junior high school textbooks contain descriptions of how “Koreans and Chinese were forcibly transported and brutally put to work. In addition, women were forcibly sent to the front as military comfort women…” and are provided with column-like segments that carry concrete stories of forced migration.

For example, the textbook published by Kyoiku Shuppan introduces the case of “Kim of the Chikuhō (in Fukuoka Prefecture) coal mine” under the title “The People Forcibly Transported from Korea and China”:

 

KIM Dae-sik was asleep at home in February 1943 when he had a conscription warrant thrust at him by police officers and municipal officials, then brought to a staging ground in handcuffs, from which he was transported to Japan along with 125 Korean compatriots. He was closely watched during his transportation to Japan, and felt the glittering eyes of seven observers whenever he had to visit the bathroom. When the convoy reached Tagawa-Gotōji Station in Fukuoka Prefecture, several hundred people were waiting to receive them to ensure that they did not escape […] [emphasis added by Atobe. The same is true in subsequent quoted passages —Miwa]

 

Tokyo Shoseki, a textbook publisher, writes as follows under the heading “The Forced Migration of Korean Citizens”:

 

The forced migration of Korean citizens began from 1939. Although it initially took the form of “recruitment,” this never took place voluntarily. From 1942, this was changed to “official arrangement” (kan’assen) by the Office of the Government-General of Korea. Japan’s public institutions had become directly involved. In order to respond to allocations by the Office of the Government-General, the police and municipal officials would sometimes barge into homes without taking off their boots to escort sleeping men out of the house. It is also said that those who resisted would be struck with wooden swords, and that wives and children who wept and wailed as they chased after the truck would be kicked from above. […]

 

Just so, forced migration is uniformly described with phrases like “while sleeping,” “being struck by wooden swords,” “trucks,” and “chasing women and children being kicked from above.” I am simply not convinced that such things could be the work of the Japanese, people who had received the moral education of the pre-war state and who took pride in being the most well-disciplined nation in the world.

My uncle worked for the Nittetsu Mining Company, and since I knew he had gone to Korea to recruit workers during the war, I asked him whether forced migration had taken place. He replied “There was absolutely no such thing as forced migration. Even when they were being repatriated to Korea after the end of the war, they were overjoyed because we took pains to make it easier for them—to the extent that, even after their return to Korea, I received letters from many of them thanking me for looking out for them [during their time in Japan].” At this, for my own part, I strongly felt the seditious influence of anti-Japanese leftists.

Although the conscription ordinance was promulgated in 1939 in the Japanese home territory, it was not enforced in Korea until 1944, so Kim could not have been issued with a conscription warrant in February 1943. This is a complete fabrication. And while it is written that a crowd of hundreds was waiting on their arrival at Tagawa-Gotōji Station to prevent them from escaping, this is also inconceivable. To the contrary, they had probably come to welcome them. Although this also came up in the round-table discussion, a notice in the Yamano Shimbun read that people had gone out to greet [the train] at Kamoo Station, and that a welcome event was held at the Kamoo Club. If such harsh forced migration had truly taken place, the accommodations provided to house them should have been under even stricter surveillance than the POW camp, but the actual housing for the Koreans was effectively no different from the housing for single Japanese workers. What is more, as also came up in the round-table discussion, in such a case they would never have been able to move about freely. We worked together, and I never once felt an inkling that the Koreans had been subjected to forced migration against their will.

Quite the contrary, an account by CHON Chun-he that appears in his Chōsenjin chōyōkō no shuki [The Account of a Korean Conscript Laborer] (Kawai Shuppan), reads as follows.

Chon, who was conscripted at the end of November 1944, “looking back, after a few quick farewells to everyone, I headed for the square in front of Yeongdeungpo-gu Office, which was a gathering place of sorts. The square was full of people leaving and those who had come to see them off. […] When the call for conscripts had finished, we all lined up in formation in front of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a send-off rally was held along with all the others that had been mobilized from across the country.”

The place was full of people leaving and others seeing them off, and they also held a send-off rally. From this account, it hardly seems that conscripted people would have been nabbed off the street and packed into a truck against their will or violently abducted while they were sleeping, or what have you. At the time, that region [Korea] was under Japan’s administrative authority and subject to the application of Japanese law; if what happened to those who legitimately came over to Japan, and for whom moreover send-off rallies were held, is going to be called forced migration, then we will have to call what happened to conscripted laborers and the Women’s Volunteer Corps (joshi teishintai) in Japan forced labor as well.

What is a mystery to me is the existence of Japanese citizens who would attempt to make up stories to the point of actually giving false testimony. Some might feel that pandering to another party by going so far as to lie in one’s testimony represents an apology to that other party, and that by doing so somehow exonerate themselves, but I personally feel to the contrary that it is in fact something that gives affront. While this was also the case with the military comfort women issue, they were barged in upon while sleeping by booted feet, clamped in manacles and loaded on to a truck. Those who resisted were beaten with wooden swords, the women and children weeping and wailing as they chased the struck were kicked at from above. If this was the actual state of such forced migration, the proud Korean people could never have remained silent—riots would surely have taken place. But no riots did take place. And if this was the fact, then how is it that the Japanese in Korea were all safely repatriated from at the end of the war? Were the Korean people a pathetic nation who offered no resistance even when they were subjected to such abuses as being stamped on and kicked? Or were they not? Reading things like Oh Seon-hwa’s Sukāto no kaze [Swish of the Skirt] trilogy and Kankokumin ni tsugu [Tell the South Koreans!] by JIN Wenxue and JIN Mingxue, I guess that the Koreans people have many admirable qualities that the Japanese lack, but the fact that the Korean people did not rebel against the Japanese even as Japan was on its knees at the end of the war surely demonstrates that what is described now as forced migration did not exist.

Anti-Japanese leftist intellectuals or the people who cry out for pacifism and peace claimed that socialist states were a worker’s paradise and never said anything critical. It makes me laugh now, but when I was hospitalized as the result of injuries sustained in a gas explosion at the Yamano coal mine in 1965, a friend who had joined the Communist Party visited me, saying, “This kind of thing is what happens in capitalist society when people think only of making money and neglect safety. It’s absolutely inconceivable that anything like a coal mine explosion could happen in China. You won’t find a single fly.” Hearing this, I rebutted, “Capitalist businessmen aren’t stupid either, you know. They know that if they neglect safety, once a big explosion like this happens, the company will go under. This kind of accident is what happens in the blind spots of human beings—even if you have done everything you possibly can to make something safe, there will always be a blind spot. People aren’t gods; there will always be something we miss. You guys put this down unilaterally to a neglect of safety, but you can bet there are rockfalls and gas explosions even in China. And I can’t believe that they don’t have flies.” What about the situation now? The true situation in socialist states became apparent with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though after the war was over, the Soviet Union forcibly transported a million Japanese to Siberia to be detained, and four hundred thousand of them died. And even though as many as twenty million people each died in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in Communist China, those who are infatuated with the left still won’t say anything about it. Now China has adopted a liberalization policy and the number of Japanese tourists has increased significantly. Now that we can see how things really are, are they still insisting that they don’t have flies? Quite recently, there was a gas explosion at a coal mine in China that resulted in a considerable number of victims. What was that all about, then? I’d like to hear someone explain that to me.

Regarding forced labor, as well, the exaggerated lies fabricated in the mass media and the publications issued by these characters are being reported as though they were true. As a coal mine engineer, I’m struggling to understand the logic at work here.

 

Next I would like to address some of the fictions about forced labor.

 

 

• The struggle against death

(Shashin Man’yōroku: Chikuhō 2 — Ōinaru Hi (jō) [A Record in 10,000 Photographs: Chikuhō 2—The Towering Inferno (Part 1)] edited by Hidenobu UENO and Kunje CHO)

 

“The year after Japan’s defeat, the monthly average coal output efficiency per laborer in the [Chikuhō] district was only 5.2 tons, but rose to 8.8 tons in 1950, 18.6 tons in 1961, before increasing sharply to 33.2 tons in 1965. It seems obvious that the dynamism of the postwar reconstruction must have been ensured by this awesome intensification of labor” (p. 35).

 

(Counterpoint)

The author is trying to attribute the entire rise in efficiency to labor intensification. The difference in human labor power is not really that significant. The main reasons for the rise in efficiency come for the most part down to rationalization and mechanization. If the rise in efficiency were due to labor intensification, laborers in the countries with the highest productivity like the USA and Japan would have been being forced to intensify the labor anywhere from a hundred times to ten times that of laborers in developing countries, where wage levels are said to be a hundredth or at best a tenth [of wage levels in developed economies].

 

• The Koreans got the dangerous work (generally found in most reports concerning forced labor)

 

Koreans were diverted to places with poor conditions for dangerous and backbreaking labor, while Japanese nationals only got the safe and easy jobs. This produced more Korean casualties.

 

(Counterpoint)

This example is one that delights newspaper journalists and is immediately seized on by those who want to emphasize the negative image of the coal mines, but those who take this at face value are people who have no idea of what the actual situation was like in the pit. Coal mining sites are places where coal seams measuring between 1.5 and 2.0 meters in height and 50 to 100 meters in length are dug out at an overall rate of 1 to 2 meters a day. For example, for a seam 2.0 meters high, with a face of 100 m, and a rate of progress of 2.0 meters, the daily coal output would be 400 cubic meters, which if we factor in the specific gravity of coal at 1.3 puts the coal output at 520 tons. If we consider this as the coal mined by the first shift, the second shift will be the loading (e.g., relocating the conveyors, producing coal by blasting, mine-cart hoisting), and this repeats. Accordingly, even for a progress schedule of 2.0 meters a day, in places with a poor ceiling or partial fault, someone with only average abilities will only be able to dig out about 1.5 meters. That means it will not be possible to move the conveyor. If the conveyor can’t be relocated, this impinges on the next day’s coal output, so places like this are exactly where you have to assign your most skilled people. Unless you assign Japanese workers with excellent skills to dangerous places in bad conditions, you will not be able to secure a stable rate of 2.0-meter progress. The Koreans at Mitsui Yamano, even those who arrived earliest, would have had no more than four or five years of experience. To be able to deal with dangerous places and sites where conditions were poor, someone would have had to be highly skilled with a wealth of experience. It follows that the report that “the Koreans got the dangerous work” is an utter lie.

 

• Many people died in the coal mine; there seemed to be a funeral almost every day.

(Seisan sarenai Shōwa: Chōsenjin kyōsei renkō no kiroku [Unpaid Debts of Shōwa: A Record of Korean Forced Migration] by Eidai Hayashi (photographs and text) and Sōji Takasaki (commentary)

 

Pit work at a coal mine took place underground, and since you were dealing with nature, it is a fact that this was dangerous work. You did the work in the knowledge that underground work was inherently dangerous. This was because you received good treatment for underground duty. I am not convinced, however, by the description that “there seemed to be a funeral almost every day.” In Shashin Man’yōroku: Chikuhō 1—Ningen no Yama [A Record in 10,000 Photographs: Chikuhō 1—The Human Mountain 1)] (p. 23), it is reported that 3,852 people died underground in coal mines across Japan over the five years from 1927 to 1931. These are the actual numbers for the period bridging the end of Taishō and the early Shōwa period, when there were a considerable number of underground accidents. Even so, they still amount to an average of 770 deaths each year. And that is for all of Japan. If people died almost every day in the hundreds of mine that existed across Japan, this would mean tens of thousands of deaths, not just those of 770 people. Today, more than 30,000 people commit suicide in Japan every year, while around 10,000 people die annually as the result of automobile accidents. At Mitsui Yamano coal mine, we only had one person die on duty over several years (except for gas explosions), to the extent that if someone died, people would remark, “someone died this year” or “[the mine’s] getting really strict about safety.” Nevertheless, the expression “every day a funeral!” in this report, although it seems to be on the side of the coal mine laborers, just like the forced migration of Koreans, is actually something that holds the coal mine laborers in contempt.

 

• On high-volume days, workers would have to work until dawn the next day, etc. (Strange Mountain )

 

As I mentioned above in (2) regarding the allegation that the Koreans got the dangerous work, the mining site had a double-shift system, with a mining shift and a loading shift. During the war, certainly, on high-volume days workers would go down into the mine at 7:00 in the morning and then come back up at 8:00 at night, but working until the next morning would not have been possible. Unless someone did the loading work, then the next mining shift would also have been impossible, you see? In addition, if they were used for more than twelve hours, the underground safety lights would grow dim and be useless. The idea of being made to work until the following morning on high-volume days would be inconceivable, and is a complete lie.

 

One encounters odd descriptions at every turn in Strange Mountain, and stories that were at complete odds with one another were brazenly published. While the editors listened to the stories of experienced people and put these down in writing, I wonder how they could have failed to notice these contradictions.

Since I have already discussed forced migration and forced labor above, I would now like to clarify some contradictions regarding Korean runaways.

 

• (Taketomi’s “Introduction,” p. 20): “Even so, for fully half to flee is terrible. Half meant 86,100 people, 10% of whom were discovered and brought back, but the 85,239 in the other 90% disappeared without a trace.”

 

• (Nishida Akira’s account, p. 21, in the Introduction): “While some of the Korean fugitives somehow managed to make good their escape, they didn’t know the area very well, and so the majority were caught. The police officers and community fire brigades established perimeters at Yagiyama Pass, and the military police were also relentless.”

 

 (Counterpoint)

 

In Nishida’s account, the majority of the fugitive were caught, but in the runaway statistics, only one in ten were discovered. Also, during the war, there simply wouldn’t have been the resources for the police, fire brigades, and military police to set up perimeters to prevent Koreans from escaping. Meanwhile, Taketomi writes that 90% of the fugitives disappeared without a trace, as though giving the impression that they might have been killed. In reality, however, it seems obvious that they would have run away to places other than coal mines to hide out with their compatriots around the country, or else to smaller coal mines. In any case, the details of the story are simply unknown.

 

2. • (Hayashi’s “Editors’ Foreword,” p. 22–23): “The first thing one can say is that [the authorities] applied the National Service Draft Ordinance to carry out the forcible and state-sponsored roundup of Koreans…. Reportedly, not a single person escaped until their arrival in Japan.”

 

• (ibid. p. 24) “During their transportation, many people jumped from the train or escaped from inns while waiting for the ferry in Pusan, and in some cases only half their number remained by the time they arrived at the coal mine.”

 

 (Counterpoint)

 

I have no idea which story is true. Moreover, both of these passages are from pages 22 to 24 of Hayashi’s “Editor’s Foreword.” The text is incoherent, rife with such radically divergent descriptions.

 

3. • (ibid. p. 24): “The orders from the ministry of Munitions to increase coal supply grew hysterical, resulting in the implementation of the ‘high-volume day’ system in the coal mines.

On Saturdays, they were made to mine coal until the next morning. When they returned to their lodging on Sunday morning, they had to go back out to work in the evening. This continued, so that a month went by in which they were unable to rest.

When four “high-volume days” fell in the space of a single month, they reached their physical limits. “I didn’t care if they killed me; I just wanted to run away from that coal mine.” They chose to run, but were prepared to die” [emphasis added by Atobe. The same is true in subsequent quoted passages —Miwa]

 

• (Testimony by Shigeharu Kakiyama, Special Higher Police, former Special Higher Police Chief at Iizuka Police Station, pp. 54–55): “At the time, the thing that gave us the most trouble in terms of labor management was people running away from the Korean dormitories; this was the only problem shared by coal mines everywhere.

This was because the substance of forced migration had changed completely between the initial period of [voluntary] recruitment and the later era of conscription. Until 1940 or 1941, there were ambitious types who felt they could find opportunity if they could only make it to Japan. In many cases, they would take advantage of the recruitment to get to Japan, then immediately run away. This was for the honest reason that they couldn’t make a life for themselves in Korea.

[…] The lodgings were even surrounded by a fence, once someone took it into their head to make a run for it, that didn’t present much of an obstacle. It was rather easy unlike a prison or a jail.

This was because, when they came to the Chikuhō coal mines, they would always have relatives or people from their home villages in the Korean dormitories or in the nearby Arirang settlements. They were canny, you see, about working in the outer coal mine or at a construction site, about where the can earn money and where they can’t. They also received a lot of offers. Or else they might try to get to relatives in and around Osaka. They were quick to conspire and run away, so you couldn’t afford to let your guard down.”

 

• (Testimony by Shigetarō Manshō, Special Higher Police, former Special Higher Police Chief at Tagawa Police Station, pp. 60–61): “Some of the Korean mine workers that were first forcibly migrated to the big coal mines ran away to the smaller mines.

Where there were coal mines, there would always be shady recruiters who could arrange jobs for miners, and who were hired exclusive to a coal mine. They would string together a pack of lies to recruit Koreans who came to enjoy themselves in the towns. With attractive promises like “you’ll be allowed to eat your fill of rice,” “they pay double wages,” “you get two days off a week,” the workers would believe them, but end up being completely deceived.

That’s how smaller coal mines managed to secure a labor force without going to the effort of recruiting in Korea.

[…] They had decided to try to make it to the Osaka area even before they were subjected to forced migration, and thought of the coal mines as just a stop along the way.”

 

 (Counterpoint)

 

According to people like Hayashi, the cause of the Korean escapes was that they were not given enough to eat, that they were worked too hard, that they reached their physical limits, to the point that they were prepared to die in their attempt to escape. But these two testimonies by men who served at the time as Special Higher Police Chiefs both suggest that this was not the case. What I want to draw attention to here is that both of the Special Higher Police Chiefs use the term “forced migration.” At the time, the term “forced migration” did not exist, and these testimonies were written up, so to speak, by Hayashi after he had listened to them. If we were to accept that the term “forced migration” was used by these two men, then as in the case of military comfort women, even though such a thing never existed, the fact that the term has become so ubiquitous in the mass media over the past twenty years means that we now blurt out “military comfort women” while meaning simply “comfort women” inside our minds. “Korean recruitment,” likewise has imperceptibly evolved into “forced migration,” but these two men were surely thinking “recruitment” inside their minds. In addition, Hayashi is reputed to be an expert on Korean forced migration. Also, in the accounts of these two men, it can also be discerned that the Koreans enjoyed freedom of movement. If this kind of forced migration and forced labor truly did happen, then the dormitories of the Koreans would inevitably have become like concentration camps, nor would they have been able to enjoy such freedom of movement. However, as noted above, even in our view as mine workers who actually experienced that time, working alongside with these men, we had absolutely no sense that they had been forced to come under such severe duress, and the coal-mining men of the round-table discussion also spoke of how such forced labor lacked any basis in the way things actually were.

                 IV.               Lies, Misunderstandings, and Hearsay in Not Much of a Picnic

In his “Editor’s Foreword,” Hayashi writes that “as the English POW [John] Baxter has provided us with a record detailing the coal mining labors of the POWs, I will leave it out here.” And while an abridged selection of John Baxter’s Not Much of a Picnic (in Japanese translation by Tadahisa Sekima) are included as a written account, this account by a former POW is extremely rife with misunderstandings and hearsay. At the extreme, it is a book full of lies. Baxter was drafted into the army in 1941 and taken prisoner by the Japanese army in Java in 1942. Until the end of the war, he was set to work as a POW at an electrical repair workshop of the machining section at the Mitsui Yamano coal mine in Inatsuki. After the end of the war, by way of Nagasaki and Canada, he returned to his native England, where Not Much of a Picnic was published as the memoir of his POW experience.

Baxter’s Japanese translator Tadahisa Sekima is the chair of the Inatsuki Cultural Association, and when I expressed my interest when he told me that Baxter had written about his days as a POW at Mitsui Yamano coal mine, he kindly allowed me to read the account. However, as someone who knows what it was like at the time during the war, I find Baxter’s description of his days at Mitsui Yamano to be full of lies, misunderstandings, and hearsay, and as to how far his story may be trusted on matters other than the Mitsui Yamano coal mine, from his capture as a POW up to his return to England, I have absolutely no idea. Below, I would like to quote passages from the original text to point out which are lies, and which are misunderstandings and hearsay.

 

I passed by the police station on the way to the camp. On the doorstep, a young Japanese man was standing on his hands. The guard explained that he was a thief, and that this was him being punished. Everyone passing by the entrance was requested to kick and punch this unfortunate fellow as he swayed there. From this, we grew used to such primitive customs […] (p. 115).

 

(I have never seen nor heard of such a punishment being performed at a Japanese police station, and especially not the Mitsui Yamano coal mine police station. On the contrary, I presume this kind of punishment did take place in England and Java …. A complete fabrication.)

 

I saw neither a blade of grass nor a single tree (p. 115).

 

(It is not as if it were a desert. There was no such place in Inatsuki aside from the spoil tip. As a POW memoir, this is an exaggeration).

 

In terms of how one entered the mine, it made my hair stand on end. A winchman would gently ease off the brakes, whereupon a trolley consisting of twelve or thirteen cars would plunge at frightening speeds down a 1/10^th incline into the pitch darkness. It seemed to go on forever, but it was probably about a half-mile. When the brakeman at the back would apply the brakes to slow down the wheels, with a painful squeal of metal the trolley made its first stop underground (p. 120).

 

(I think he is referring here to the car carrying workers on the mine slope, but this car was not stopped by its own breaks. Rather, the operation and stopping of the car was carried out using a hoist. Conductors rode at the very front and back of the trolley, and the hoist would be put into motion or stopped according to their signals. Anyone with experience underground would have known this immediately. Since Baxter was assigned to the electrical repair workshop, he did not have such experience. Accordingly, this story is a kind of misunderstanding or hearsay).

 

The inside of the pit had been completely dug out. Only low-quality coal remained in the thin coal seam, almost all of it was rock. [….] As a result of the wartime shortage, the wire cables were made by twisting together steel wires. […] (p. 121).

 

(If the coal seam had indeed been completely exhausted, then the Mitsui Yamano coal mine would have had to close at the same time the war ended. And while he writes that wire cables were made by twisting together steel wires due to a lack of resources, wire cables are made that way to ensure that they have flexibility and strength. Even the huge cables used on the Kanmon Bridge and Akashi Kaikyō Bridge are all made in the same fashion. It was not due to a lack of resources. Baxter’s interpretation is unbecoming as that of a technician).

 

Even though we knew that the educational level of the Orient was very low, but we always had to think that there might be some few who could count to ten (p. 123).

 

(As a Japanese POW from 1942 to 1945, Baxter would have had contact with the Japanese, and should have been well aware of the degree of education among Japanese people. His use of such an expression demonstrates his contempt for the people of the Orient. No Japanese at that time would have been unable to count to ten. At the time, the Japanese rate of enrolment in regular education was among the highest in the world. It was in the American military that one would find many soldiers unable to perform multiplication or division.)

 

Alas, all of our efforts and all of those by the Japanese supervisors came to nothing. That night, we were visited by an extremely fierce air raid; and as it was an air raid in which thousand-pound bombs were sometimes dropped with great accuracy, the two shiny engine-cars were targeted, both ended up as iron scrap (p. 130).

 

(The Mitsui Yamano coal mine was never bombed, nor did I ever hear any talk of engine-cars brought from the Philippines. And I am skeptical of the existence at the time of bombers that could have scored direct hits even in the middle of the night, like the high-tech functionality at the Gulf War. This is an utter fabrication and lie.)

 

The story of releasing the runaway coal truck (p. 134).

 

(The operator of the slope-hoisting winch would never have walked away leaving the hoist holding ten cars full of coal. Also, the slope-hoisting winch in question had between 300 and 500 horsepower, and no one without any experience would have been able to slip into the winding area and loosen the brake with such ease. This story is yet also a kind of misunderstanding, hearsay, or fabrication.)

 

Seeing a familiar nationality symbol on the English aircraft […] Shortly after the Allied Forces vanished, I heard a huge explosion that I thought came from a nearby munitions stockpile. Looking out over the valley, we could see a huge mushroom cloud slowly rising hundreds of feet into the air in the distance. What we had thought to be a nearby explosion was in fact the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki (p. 149).

 

(It would have been impossible to see the Nagasaki atomic bombing from the Mitsui Yamano coal mine in Inatsuki, and the Allied planes at the end of the war all belonged to the US military. This story, too, is a complete lie).

 

Reading Baxter’s account of his life as a POW at Mitsui Yamano, there are many stories that are utter lies—especially the episodes about how Mitsui Yamano was bombed and having been able to see the atomic bombing of Nagasaki from Inatsuki. In particular, as Baxter was assigned to the electrical repair workshop in the machining section, he would have had no experience at all underground. His stories about the inside of the mine are all hearsay or misunderstandings. While I understand Baxter’s desire to dress up what, from a contemporary perspective, is a valuable account of the POW experience, it is simply too full of lies, misunderstandings, and hearsay. Accordingly, we cannot trust all of the story, from the time of his capture as a POW until his release.

However, this is something that we are able to say as people who knew what it was like at the time on the ground; if people who didn’t know the facts of the matter read this book, they would likely think what is written therein to be the truth. This is precisely what is meant by the Chinese proverb “When one dog barks for nothing, all other dogs bark in earnest.” It is truly something terrible.

V.               Conclusion

Based on the foregoing, for all that the account given in Strange Mountain was written up in such felicitous prose, I believe that it was understood just how it extracted and exaggerated only the darker aspects of the coal mine.

Finally, I would like to say a few things about the Korean accommodations and the POW camp.

The wraparound band of Strange Mountain features copy that reads “furthermore, drawings of the Mitsui Yamano Mine internment camp that should have been incinerated, reveal the actual state of the coal mine in wartime,” something that was also briefly reported in the newspapers.

Although this phrasing is suggestive of the low-quality accommodation (takobeya), one used to find in labor camps, I was quite surprised when I glanced at the blueprint in question. With sturdily built structures and considerable living space provided for each worker, I felt that it would be hard to top as far as wartime dormitory lodgings and camp facilities were concerned. It also came up during the round-table discussion as something that might have been better even than the housing for the Japanese mine workers. This result seemed to be the opposite of that intended by the editors. I am someone who was born and raised at the Mitsui Yamano coal mine, and the miner housing I lived in as a young child was a tenement with a 6-tatami mat room and a 4.5-mat room, two rooms housing a family of nine. In individual terms, that would have been about 1.17 mats per person – the Korean, Chinese laborer, and POW camps were even more spacious. Furthermore, the blueprint for the Korean dormitory accommodation features the proposed installation of a 7-shaku (2.12-meter) fence “to prevent escape.” Discovering this fact, the author mentions this repeatedly as though he had found a smoking gun, at the time—during the war—all materials were subject to rationing in the midst of the controlled economy. It follows that the plan was simply labelled “to prevent escape” as a justification for being supplied with the materials necessary for a fence to surround the dormitory. As evidence of this, surely we can take the testimony of the Special Higher Police Chief that “that kind of fence would not be any deterrent to escape,” as well as the fact that in actual fact, the Koreans enjoyed freedom of movement. Even after the 7-shaku fence was built, nothing changed in terms of a decrease in abscondments. That board fence merely ended up serving as a boundary line; it was not useful for preventing escapes. Incidentally, I wonder if the editor was not aware that the same kind of boundary fence was built around the dormitory for single Japanese men, as well.

It is often stated that when criticizing a hundred-year-old past, one mustn’t look with the eyes of the present; one must see things by adopting a hundred-year-old perspective. Yet even today, in the cheaper lodgings available in Tokyo and Osaka, do we not find bunkbeds on the space of a single tatami mat? I feel strongly and deeply that the one percent must not be exaggerated as though it were one hundred percent.

In the testimony of Hayato Hirano (Baxter’s instructor, a resident of Edasaka in Inatsuki), we read that “The POWs unloaded from the train and loaded onto the trucks at Kamoo Station headed for the internment camp. Looking closely, they were playing guitars and accordions and having a grand time. Even though they were POWs, they were a sunny group, with no hint of a gloomy atmosphere. I was shocked, wondering at how they could act so as mere POWs” (Strange Mountain, p.118). Elsewhere, he notes how “after the meal was over, they enjoyed themselves by tap-dancing to the rhythm of their boots, or banging two spoons together with both hands and singing songs. I watched, aghast, wonder how these men could be POWs” (ibid., p. 120). Even during the food shortage, both the POWs and Koreans were provided with three meals and a bath every day. As for the Koreans, even people living in the dormitories for single men were able to move around freely, while those with wives lived in the same housing as Japanese, and shared the same bath.

An account by another English POW named Eddie Hawkins is included in abridged translation under the title “The Real Situation at POW Camp 8.” The author concludes his account by saying that “while I will leave the question of whether or not the coal mining labor we were made to perform at this camp was appropriate for wartime prisoners to experts in international law, the Japanese would have it that our conditions were the same as those enjoyed by the Japanese themselves. While I can agree with that in some ways, in any event, I would hope that whoever is assigned to consider this allegation is someone familiar with the way things were in coal mines during the war” (ibid., p. 147).

Conversely, detainees in Siberia were also forcibly transported, not as POWs in wartime but even after the war was over, reportedly resulting in 400,000 victims, and the actual state of labor in that context was also introduced in part in the round-table discussion. As aptly described by Sai, “To be provided with rooms, with facilities… those POWs were almost in paradise compared to those of us who were detained in Siberia. It is written in this book how the POWs each had one-and-a-half tatami mats to themselves, but we had to squeeze two-and-a-half people onto the space of a single mat.” I feel that the truth of the matter is encapsulated there in that series of anecdotes. As compared to the Soviet Union, what people call forced migration and forced labor in Japan simply did not exist. We should not be embarrassed to say as much.

Based on the conditions experienced by detainees in Soviet Siberia, the facilities provided for Koreans, Chinese laborers, and POWs—which we can see in the blue prints were one-and-a-half tatami mats per person, equivalent to what the Japanese provided for themselves—as well as the freedom of movement enjoyed by the Koreans and the real reasons for their escape, I wonder what kind of truth the editors can see. I would really like to know.

Moreover, at the time, the war was at its height. The Japanese people had mustered all of their power to fight for their lives against the USA, Britain, China, and the Netherlands. We must not critique such a time of emergency from the normal perspective of peacetime.

By exposing and exaggerating the darkest one percent of a period of emergency at the height of the war, will a postwar generation that knows nothing else be able to take pride in their homeland? My wish is that the editors of Strange Mountain now turn their able pens to painting a vivid description of the true character of the coal mines as the bright, liberated spaces, absent discrimination and brimming with energy, that are recalled fondly by ninety-nine percent of coal-mining men – to give an account, as the editors state admirably at the end of the book, of “the coal mines as they once were.”

 

 (Responsibility for the text: Sai and Atobe)