Japan Press Weekly

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2023 July 12 - 18 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP Kira attends screening of documentary film about 1923 massacre of Koreans

A screening of a documentary film about the mass murder of Koreans as a result of groundless rumors in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake took place on July 13 in the Diet building.

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Kira Yoshiko attended the event and delivered a speech in solidarity. She said, “The massacre should be remembered and passed down for future generations. I’ll work hard to make Japanese society free of hate crime.”

The documentary shown at the event was one of the works of a Korean-Japanese documentary filmmaker, Oh Choong-kong. It focuses on the story in which Koreans taken into “protection custody” at an Imperial Japanese Army camp in Chiba’s Narashino City were handed over to local vigilante groups and to be slaughtered.

Delivering a speech on behalf of the event organizers, a director of a civil group working to recover the remains of massacre victims, Nishizaki Masao criticized the government for its continued reluctance to admit to the 1923 massacre. He said that the government should face up to historical facts.