Ignoring the History of Foreign Forced Labour at Japan's ‘Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution'

Controversy has engulfed Japan’s ‘Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding, and Coal Mining’ since their World Heritage inscription in 2015. During the Second World War, the most significant of these sites in Kyushu used thousands of Korean and Chinese forced labourers, along with thousands of Allied POWs as slave labourers. The Japanese government refused to fully acknowledge this history between 2015 and 2021 in its public historical displays, ignoring criticisms raised by South Korea and other affected nations. This chapter focuses on the sites most crucial to Japan’s development of heavy industry where forced and slave labour was used: Gunkanjima and Miike coal mines, Nagasaki Shipbuilding complex, and Yawata Steel Works.