Koreans remember interned family members in visit to Micronesia

SEOUL, Oct. 9 (Yonhap) -- Family members of Koreans interned by Japan as laborers in Micronesia during World War II flew to the Pacific islands on Thursday to commemorate the victims for the first time since the war's end, organizers said.

Records show Japan mobilized hundreds of thousands of Koreans to work at coal
mines and military facilities or serve as sex slaves in and outside of Japan in
the later years of its 1910-1945 colonial occupation of the peninsula.
Some 1,100 Koreans were forced to fight or build military facilities in Chuuk, a
cluster of islands in the southwestern part of the Pacific Ocean that was one of
Japan's hardest fought battlegrounds against the United States during the war.
Many of them died there.
"Through this memorial service, we pray that the departed souls of those who fell
victim to imperial Japan far from home may be at peace," the Truth Commission on
Forced Mobilization Under the Japanese Imperialism said in a statement.
The commission, launched in 2004 with a mandate from the National Assembly to
identify and compensate victims of colonization, has held memorial services in
major mobilized regions -- notably Saipan in the Pacific, Russia's far eastern
island of Sakhalin and Okinawa, southern Japan -- since 2006. Prior to its
formation, no public ceremony had been held to remember the victims.
A group of 18 family members of some of the victims are scheduled to arrive in
Chuuk on Saturday after a layover in Guam. A Japanese envoy to Micronesia will
read a mourning speech, the commission said.
hkim@yna.co.kr