'151 Korean forced laborers died on Palau'

By Na Jeong-ju

Nearly half the total number of Koreans forced to work under Japanese forces on the Pacific island of Palau during World War II died there, a government report showed.

According to the report, released Tuesday by a Prime Minister’s Office panel investigating forced labor during the colonial era, a total of 334 Koreans were sent to the island in 1944. Of them, 151 people never returned home alive.

Palau was a key base for the Japanese military in its war against the United States at the time.

Of the 151 Korean victims, one died of an unidentified illness, 27 were killed in a U.S. attack on their way to the island and 123 others lost their lives due to raids or malnutrition, according to the commission.

In 1944, there was the Battle of Peleliu on the island, in which nearly 2,000 Americans and 10,000 Japanese were killed over two months.

“Survivors were also exposed to outbreaks of epidemics and gunfire. As the Japanese government did not come up with any measures for the survivors after the war, they had to negotiate with the U.S. military in order to return home,” said Kim Myung-hwan, in charge of the investigation.

Japan expanded its military facilities in Palau from 1937 in its push to establish colonies further into East Asian regions and New Guinea. Some 500 Korean laborers were drafted each year between 1940 and 1944, the panel said.

Last month, the panel claimed that more than 120 Koreans died on the Japanese island of Hashima, dubbed the Battleship Island, in the Nagasaki Prefecture after being forced into labor during the war.

They were forcibly taken to coal mines on the island and worked under terrible conditions. Most of the Korean laborers on Hashima were also exposed to radiation when they were mobilized for restoration work in Nagasaki after the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, it said.

Millions of Korean men were forcibly drafted into Japanese firms during the 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea.