An Eviction Unworthy of the Japanese

The plight of 380 residents in the tiny Japanese village of Utoro brings to light once again the long and continuing discrimination against Koreans living in Japan.

The villagers--Korean laborers conscripted by Japan during World War II and their spouses and descendants--have reached across the Pacific to solicit help in preventing their five-acre village, near the ancient city of Kyoto, from being razed by developers. Letters of support and money have poured in as a result of their appeal in an advertisement in several U.S. newspapers.

Utoro poses yet another challenge to Tokyo’s coming to terms with its unfair treatment of Koreans in Japan, as well as with the country’s whitewashing of its World War II activities. Japan’s new prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, has said Japan should apologize to its Asian neighbors for wartime brutality.

Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were conscripted as laborers during Japan’s colonial control of Korea from 1910 to 1945. At Utoro, Koreans helped to build a military airport and to prepare food for workers there.

When the war ended, about half of the 1,300 Koreans at Utoro returned home or went to Korean ghettos in Osaka and Kyoto. Others stayed, living in hovels and eking out a living by growing their own food.

The land under Utoro was eventually acquired by a subsidiary of Nissan Motor Co., which in 1987 sold the five acres to a developer without telling villagers of the change of ownership. The only announcement consisted of eviction notices delivered a year later.

When demolition teams arrived in 1989 the residents protected their village with their bodies. The case is now in court, but the Utoro residents, lacking title to the property, fear they do not have a fair chance in the Japanese legal system.

Little wonder, because that system has long denied rights to Koreans living in Japan. To become naturalized Japanese citizens, they must give up their Korean cultural identity. They face discrimination in jobs, housing and education. Until Tokyo relented to pressure from both inside and outside Japan, the government even fingerprinted Japan-born Korean residents. Indeed, Japan’s government, after years of official denials, admitted only last week that Korean women, along with women from other Asian countries and elsewhere, were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war. Tokyo has been mum on reparations for those women.

The Utoro case provides Japan an opportunity to demonstrate some conscience and make small amends for past injustices. The Ministry of Justice is said to be investigating whether the Utoro villagers might qualify for reparations. Certainly the developer who now owns the Utoro land should consider some kind of compromise. The residents should, at the very least, be provided with government assistance and housing if their eviction is upheld.