Japan Press Weekly

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2013 August 28 - September 3 TOP3 [HISTORY]

Memorial events held for Korean victims of 1923 massacre

In the midst of growing xenophobia in Japan, memorial services for Korean victims of the massacre following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake were held on August 31 and September 1 in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

On September 1, 1923, more than 100,000 people in the Kanto region were killed or went missing after being hit by a major earthquake and tsunami. In the aftermath of the disaster, the Imperial government and reactionists deliberately spread groundless rumors that “Koreans are throwing deadly poisons into wells,” and thousands of foreigners, including Koreans and Chinese, were slaughtered by police, military troops, and vigilante groups.

An organizing committee composed of historians, lawyers and civil groups on August 31 held a gathering in Tokyo to commemorate the victims as well as learn about the truth behind this hidden history, attended by 320 citizens.

In the assembly, Sakamoto Noboru, the vice-chair of the History Educationalist Conference of Japan, talked about the fact that the word “massacre” was deleted from the description of the incident in a side reader for public school students in Tokyo and Yokohama City. He stressed the importance of telling the historical truth to the world and passing it down to younger generations, saying, “As with the issues of the wartime sexual slavery system of the Japanese army and the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, another campaign to distort history has been taking place.”

Nishizaki Masao, who had led a movement to build a monument to the massacre victims in Tokyo’s Sumida Ward, has been making a list of those who were killed in the pogrom. He said to the audience, “Probably I am a member of the last generation that directly heard the victims’ stories. If you have any information on the massacre, please share it with me.”

On September 1, a memorial ceremony took place in front of the monument in Sumida Ward.

The head of the international division of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan in his speech referred to the recent exclusion of North Korean schools from the tuition-free program and the increase in hate speech marches staged across the country. He criticized the Japanese government for trying to rewrite the history as living witnesses have been declining.

Japanese Communist Party Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly member Azegami Miwako cited the fact that the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education forced textbook publishers to replace the word “massacred” with just “killed” in the description of the 1923 bloodbath in a supplementary reader for public high school students. “We cannot overlook the moves to deny Japan’s infliction of damage to other Asian nations and circulate a false interpretation of history,” she stressed.