De
schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel, Andre Vltchek, heeft
een reis gemaakt naar Japan om daar het eiland Hashima (ook bekend
als Gunkanjima), in de buurt van Nagasaki te bezoeken.
Vltcheck
wilde met eigen ogen het eiland zien waar Japan duizenden Koreaanse
en Chinese gevangenen liet werken in de mijnen en op de scheepswerven
waar oorlogsschepen werden gebouwd. Het meest gruwelijk was wel het
lot van Chinese en Koreaanse vrouwen die daar als seksslaven te werk
werden gesteld…….
Vltcheck
beschrijft hoe je je als bezoeker moet onderwerpen aan de strakke regie van de
gidsen, die geen vragen wensen te beantwoorden die niet in het
Japanse straatje passen, dus geen vragen over de werkslaven en de
seksslaven. Van 1919 tot 1945 werd Korea bezet door Japanse troepen
en in die tijd werden naar schatting 60.000 Koreanen gedeporteerd naar Japan om daar als slaven te worden ingezet (op plekken als Hashima)…….
Het
eiland heeft intussen de status van werelderfgoed gekregen (van de
UNESCO), daarvoor heeft Japan beloofd aandacht te schenken aan de
slavernij op Hashima en nog een paar van dergelijke industriële terreinen. Je raadt het al: van die aandacht is niets te merken en
men wordt zelfs pissig als je ernaar durft te vragen…….
Japan
herschrijft haar geschiedenis en voor WOII heeft men amper plek in de
geschiedenisboeken, e.e.a. heeft alles te maken met het steeds
sterker wordend nationalisme, dat zoals je weet vaak de voorloper is
van fascisme en vooral gepaard gaat met een fascistische zienswijze op de geschiedenis……..
Men
zegt vaak dat we kunnen leren van de geschiedenis, echter dat geldt
duidelijk niet voor zaken als fascisme, of de vele uitwassen van het
kapitalisme waar zovelen, het dodelijke slachtoffer van
werden……… (het cliché: ‘van hard werken is nog nooit iemand doodgegaan’, is een smerige leugen, vooral gebezigd door welgestelden en neoliberale politici, zoals die van de VVD, CDA, D66 en de zogenaamde christelijke partijen CU en SGP, zelfs politici van de PvdA hebben deze leugen in het verleden gebezigd…….. Al duizenden jaren hebben mensen zich daadwerkelijk doodgewerkt, ‘niets nieuws onder de zon…..’)
Hashima
– Brutal History and the Most Haunted Island on Earth
By
Andre Vltchek
August
08, 2018 “Information
Clearing House” – Do
you want to see perhaps the spookiest island on earth – Hashima
(also known as Gunkanjima – the Battleship Island) – which is
located just 30 minutes by speedboat from the historic Japanese port
city of Nagasaki? Now you can. Just book online, pay the equivalent
of 40 American dollars, and then hop on one of those shiny sleek
vessels belonging to Gunkanjima Concierge or to some other company.
Do
it, and you will see the island which looks like an abandoned
monstrous wreck; like a sunken and haunted ship.
You
will sail around it. You will even be able to disembark and walk a
few hundred meters on a fenced path. Guides/minders will let you take
a few snapshots.
But
that is all. No stepping left or right off the path. No going ahead
of the group. No lagging behind. And please, no ‘provocative’
questions!
The
guides are well trained to ‘entertain you’, to tell you just how
‘haunted’ the island is and how ‘vibrant’ it used to be in
the past.
Sugary
smiles never leave their faces.
But
were you to defy their written and unwritten rules, they’d
immediately jump and appear next to you. They would even loudly scold
you. Suddenly they’d become very rude.
What
are they afraid of? What are they hiding? What really took place on
this island?
The
true horrors of the past will never be conveyed to you. It is all
about WWII, and Japan is still in denial.
A
Japanese tour guide (designated for the Japanese-speaking visitors)
as well as a carefully prepared electronic recording for the English
speakers, will recount countless details about the island’s
geography and uncontroversial chapters of history, but close to
nothing about the terror of the slave labor into which the Korean and
Chinese people were forced into, during World War II.
*
On
6 July 2015, The Guardian reported:
“Unesco
has decided to grant world heritage status to more than 20
old industrial sites in Japan after officials from the country agreed
to acknowledge that some of them used Korean forced labourers before
and during the second world war.
The
23 Meiji period (1868-1912) sites include coalmines and shipyards
that Japan says contributed to its transformation from
feudalism into a successful modern economy.
South
Korea, however, had opposed the application for world heritage status
unless clear reference was made to the use of an estimated 60,000
labourers forced to work at seven of the sites, including the island
coalmine Gunkanjima, during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule over
the Korean peninsula.”
Opposition
was also expressed by China (PRC).
The
issue of forced labor and Tokyo’s stubborn rejection to acknowledge
it, delayed the inscription of the sites by UNESCO. However, in 2015,
Japan yielded, and its delegation to UNESCO declared:
“Japan
is prepared to take measures that allow an understanding that there
were a large number of Koreans and others who were brought against
their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at
some of the sites”.
The
sites, including the notorious Hashima/Gunkanjima, eventually gained
world heritage status. In exchange, both South Korea and China
expected Japan to highlight the suffering of their people during the
occupation and WWII. The sites where forced laborers used to be held,
were supposed to carry clearly marked and detailed explanations. But
as in so many other cases related to its dark history, Japan did
close to nothing to keep its side of the bargain. With the world
heritage status, it got what it wanted, but gave almost nothing in
return.
*
In
May, I spent three days in Nagasaki, visiting my friend, a leading
left-wing Australian historian, Geoffrey Gunn.
For
many years, I have been coming to this city, searching for answers to
a myriad of questions related to Japan’s and Asia’s complex past.
The
past of Nagasaki has it all: great old Japanese culture, Christians
and their prosecution, the Dutch traders and their settlement, a
vibrant Chinese minority. Nagasaki was always one of the most ‘open’
cities in Japan, by choice or by force. But also, this is where the
military ships were built, where many slave laborers were brought to
from the occupied territories, and this is also where the second
A-bomb was exploded by the US at the end of WWII.
Seen
from the roof of the imposing Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, the
bay of the city is still dotted with WWII ‘relics’. Near the
water, there is a huge crane, another fragment of an industrial
UNESCO world heritage site. The crane belongs to the Mitsubishi
shipyards, which have been, for long decades, producing and repairing
Japan’s military vessels.
“Officially,
Japan does not have a military,” I said, sarcastically. “But
look, it is in possession of these huge battleships, docked at the
other side of the bay.”
“You
are lucky. They just arrived here,” said Geoff. “These docks
played an extremely important role in the past. Gunkanjima mines also
belonged to Mitsubishi. They were excavating coal there, and then
building some of the largest battleships here, in Nagasaki.”
For
the rest of the evening we discussed the bizarre refusal of the
Japanese governments and public to acknowledge the past. Even now,
more than 70 years after the end of the war, these issues are taboo:
the genocide committed against the Chinese people, and the terrible
crimes against the Koreans.
Often,
when the past is mentioned, the famously polite Japanese people
suddenly become defensive, even aggressive.
*
In
2015, Japan began literally blackmailing UNESCO, temporarily
withdrawing its payment dues, after the United Nations Education,
Science and Culture Agency listed the 1937 Nanjing Massacre documents
in its “Memory of the World” program. The funds were eventually
released, but the message was sent, clearly and patently.
This
stubborn refusal to deal with the horrors of the past is bringing
Japan closer and closer to the deadly embrace of the West,
particularly the United States, and further and further away from
potentially friendly relations with the rest of north Asia,
particularly China.
After
WWII, the so-called Tokyo Trial supervised by the US (also known as
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE))
was clearly designed to punish just a few individuals, while
preserving the Japanese industrial, business and political system in
its original form, so it could serve the interests of the West. After
the trial, Japan was allowed to rebuild and to join the West in its
aggressive policy towards the Asia Pacific. It played a significant
role in the brutal Korean War, during which the West massacred
millions of Korean citizens.
“Modern
Japan has no foreign policy,” I was once told by the Irish academic
and political analyst David McNeal, who is based in Tokyo. “It is
strictly following the US dictate. The same goes for the media
coverage of the international events.”
David
has no illusions about the Japanese take on its history:
“They
are rewriting text books; they skip through WWII, dedicating to it
only eight pages… Nationalism is rising… There is so much
self-censorship in Japanese media, now. And the government is issuing
‘guidelines’, the so-called ‘Orange Book’, for instance: how
to treat anything that is ‘contagious’… or anything related to
history. There are instructions to writers and translators. For
instance: ‘never use words like Nanking Massacre, except when you
quote foreign experts’. Or ‘Yasukuni Shrine – never use word
“controversial” in connection to it.’ We cannot write about
‘sexual slaves’ from WWII.”
The
more ignorant about its past Japan gets, the more it seems to
strongly dislike its former victims – China and Korea. According to
a Pew Research Center poll (2017), 83% of the Japanese people have an
unfavorable view of China. Korea does not fare much better. Both
countries (PRC and ROK) are now clearly leaving Japan behind, when it
comes to the economy and in the case of South Korea, the standard of
living. The reaction of Tokyo: moving closer and closer towards the
West, while adopting an increasingly aggressive policy towards two
communist nations: China and North Korea.
*
But
back to the Battleship Island… You pay, and you get onboard. Right
from the beginning, even before the vessel departs from Nagasaki, you
get bombarded by outrageous propaganda: about that “samurai spirit”
of Japan and the entire Nagasaki area.
There
is continuous control, right from the start. You get up from your
seat, and immediately someone approaches you: Where are you going? Do
you want to change seat? No, you cannot sit here…” Guides (or
call them minders) sound extremely rude: their English is primitive,
while their obsession with all sorts of rules and regulations is
fundamentalist.
An
old dude who is here clearly in order to play the role of the main
propagandist, is continuously clarifying things into the microphone.
His voice is amplified, and his performance soon turns into an
annoying and uninterrupted flow of verbal diarrhea. There is no space
for reflection – no time to feel and to pause or let alone to ask
some serious questions.
Whenever
he stops, some cheaply-made video begins playing on the screen. Then
advertisements of Kirin Beer are beamed.
The
yacht is sailing towards the place that held thousands of people as
slave laborers, where many died, where women were turned into sexual
slaves. But the circus goes on. No reflection and no repentance.
On
the island, I refuse to follow the group. I lag behind, trying to
avoid loud noise and the herd of people. Of course, I soon get
confronted by two “guides”, trying to push me back towards the
flock.
I
ignore them, keep filming.
They
become aggressive. One shouts: “This is Japan. Follow our rules!”
I
keep filming.
I
did not come here to be loved. The reason for my journey was simple:
to determine whether the Japanese government sticks to the deal it
made with UNESCO, Korea and China – whether it marks and
commemorates the sites where forced laborers were pushed into an
inhuman existence and work, and where some of them, died.
I
found nothing of that kind: no information, no commemoration!
Back
in Nagasaki, I asked for brochures explaining the past. There were no
such brochures. The organizers of the island visits had no idea what
I was asking about.
Later,
the next day, professor Gunn took me to a small private museum
managed by local Koreans, commemorating the terror which Japan
committed against the Korean and Chinese people.
At
least this is where the truth about ‘the most haunted island’ on
Earth can be found. If one could find that tiny museum…
Gunkanjima
– a ghost island which resembles, at least from a distance, a
mighty destroyer; an island dotted with tall buildings now lacking
windows and doors. An island where thousands of miners used to go
down into deep shafts, some voluntarily, some by force. An island –
Gunkanjima – where many people used to live, and many died. A place
so mysterious and so unique, beautiful in its own way, but also both
symbolic and horrifying.
Andre
Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative
journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries.
Three of his latest books are Revolutionary
Optimism, Western Nihilism, a
revolutionary novel “Aurora” and
a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing
Lies Of The Empire”.
View his other books here.
Watch Rwanda
Gambit,
his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his
film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On
Western Terrorism”.
Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and
continues to work around the world. He can be reached through
his website and
his Twitter.
==============================
Zie ook:
‘In de VS berichtte men in 1945, dat Hiroshima ‘a military base’ was…….‘
‘Hiroshima, één van de grootste oorlogsmisdaden ooit, 71 jaar later redenen te over voor herdenking!‘
‘Overlevenden atoomaanval op Hiroshima vragen om een verbod op kernwapens‘ (2018)
en zie voor verdere VS-terreur na WOII:
‘VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII……..‘
‘VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen……….‘
‘List of wars involving the United States‘
PS: Als je het artikel van Vltcheck leest, zou je kunnen denken dat de tweede atoombom die de VS afwierp op Nagasaki ook Hashima trof, echter dat is niet waar, wel werd Nagasaki afgeschilderd als doel met grote militaire aanwezigheid en militaire bedrijvigheid…… Al had de VS met een atoomaanval op Hashima de duizenden werkslaven daar getroffen. De VS gebruikte de leugen over ‘het militaire karakter van Nagasaki’ om de atoomaanval op die stad ‘te verantwoorden……….’ (en ja ook de VS overheid is expert in geschiedvervalsing……) Wel werden veel dwangarbeiders in de stad Nagasaki zelf getroffen door de tweede atoombom die de VS op Japan afwierp (in feite was de aanval op burgerdoel Nagasaki, zoals die op Hiroshima, ook een test zodat men de gevolgen van zo’n laffe schoftenaanval nog beter kon bestuderen….)……
