As many as 100 Koreans, who were forcibly mobilized by Japan to build military facilities on the Marshall Islands, were indiscriminately killed in a rebellion that appears to have started after they were forced to eat human flesh, a government report said Tuesday.
A government committee, formed to investigate Japan's forced mobilization of Koreans during the 1910-1945 colonial era, said that the results of its three-year probe indicate that the laborers were served the flesh of their colleagues, disguised as "whale meat," after the Japanese forces ran out of food.
Koreans who survived the 1945 incident have given testimony of cannibalism, but the report is the first from the government supporting them.
According to the report, the incident began in February 1945 when the Koreans, taken to Mili Atoll to build an airstrip and other military facilities for Japanese troops, killed seven Japanese officials supervising them.
Records show there were about 800 to 1,000 forced Korean laborers on the islands, which served as the eastern defensive perimeter for the Japanese military forces in the Central Pacific during the war. After taking control of the Marshalls from Germany in 1914, the Japanese steadily increased their military presence there.