Heritage Title for Japan Industry Sites Draws Mixed Reaction

Yes, at the meeting of a UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Bonn at which all 21 committee members, including Japan and Korea, had to vote unanimously to approve selections, she carefully avoided the word “slave” to describe the Korean workers.

That paved the way for Sunday’s decision, which was celebrated in Japan yesterday.

Among them are the Hashima undersea coal mine off Nagasaki, known as “Battleship Island”.

The San Antonio Missions in Texas have been awarded world heritage status by the U.N.’s cultural body. Hamburg’s Speicherstadt district, a vast complex of red-brick warehouses built between 1883 and 1927 in Germany’s biggest port. The Rjukan-Notodden industrial site in Norway, built in the early 20th century to produce fertilizer to meet the booming demand from agriculture.

“Japan is prepared to take measures that will allow for the 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 Japanese delegation read out a statement after the registration was decided, based on its agreement with South Korea.

China had voiced support for South Korea’s opposition against the Japanese bid because Chinese people were also forced to work at the Japanese industrial sites from the mid-19th to early 20th century.

The UNESCO committee had been scheduled to decide on the new listings on Saturday, but postponed any decision to Sunday to give Japan and South Korea time to coordinate their positions.

“Japan is prepared to incorporate appropriate measures into interpretative strategy to remember the victims, such as the establishment of an information centre”.

In his address to the committee, South Korea’s second vice foreign minister Cho Tae Yul called the decision an important step to keep the victims’ sufferings in people’s minds, adding that his country backed the listing with the expectation that Tokyo will carry out what it has promised to do.

“I’m glad from the heart”, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.

South Korea had initially opposed the sites’ nomination, but Seoul withdrew its objections on condition that Japan concede that many Koreans had been forced to work at seven of the facilities before and during World War II. “We will renew our resolve to preserve these wonderful heritage sites that tell the accomplishments of our ancestors and pass them on to the next generation”.

Zhang told the state-run China Daily newspaper that she “had noticed that Japan acknowledged the forced labor history”.

Next year the committee will consider whether to add churches and other Christian locations in Nagasaki and Kumamoto prefectures, southwestern Japan.

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Japan’s ambassador to UNESCO, Kuni Sato, says, under the settlement, Japan will acknowledge its historical responsibilities.