The Battleship Island (2017, South Korea)
Hashima Island, nicknamed “the Battleship Island” due to its appearance, was a small island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, that served as a coal mine, forced labor camp, and comfort station before and during World War II. Koreans were abducted, “conscripted,” or tricked by the promise of safety and better lives — many men, including young boys, were sent to Japan and worked in dangerous conditions in labor camps, factories, and mines, while women and young girls were sent to “comfort stations” throughout Japan and Asia, where they were sex slaves, or “comfort women,” for Japanese soldiers.
In addition to Koreans, Imperial Japan also targeted people from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, among others. An estimated 450,000 male laborers were sent to Japan, while as many as 500,000 women were abducted throughout the war. Estimates of the total number of civilian deaths throughout Asia due to mass killings, rape, forced labor, starvation, and human experimentation at the hands of Imperial Japan goes as high as fourteen million.
Around 80% of comfort women were Korean. Most women were between ages 14-18, though many were described as being abducted before they could menstruate. Survivors have described being raped twenty to thirty times a day, every day, day and night. Many women died from sexual trauma, diseases, or beatings or stabbings from Japanese soldiers, or were massacred at the end of the war. One Japanese soldier described: “The women cried out, but it didn’t matter to us whether they lived or died. We were the emperor’s soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance.”
Much of the rightwing population and media of Japan, including Japan’s current prime minister Shinzō Abe, believes that comfort women never existed or that their stories are exaggerated, and that forced labor was not used. The city of Osaka ended its sister city designation with San Francisco last year when a memorial to comfort women was erected in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Many rightwing journalists have attempted to disprove survivors of forced labors camps, saying that they lied or exaggerated. Politician Tōru Hashimoto said that violence and coercion were never used by the Japanese military on civilians, while also describing the use of comfort women as “necessary” — all of this, despite the accounts of survivors, confessions from Japanese soldiers, and the existence of incriminating photographs and Imperial Japanese documents. One survivor named Kang Il-chul, who was 16 when she was abducted, said, “The prime minister says there is no proof that we existed, but I am living proof.”
In 2015, Japan submitted Hashima Island as a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to “its role in the rapid industrialization of Japan.” South Korea opposed this, but a compromise was reached, where Japan promised to include descriptions of how Koreans were “forced to work under harsh conditions” on the island. However, after the island was made a World Heritage Site, Japan said that “the remark ‘forced to work under harsh conditions’ did not mean ‘forced labor.’” While UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee required that the victims of Hashima are remembered, the island’s official tourism website and tour program do not currently acknowledge this.
The South Korean film The Battleship Island sparked outrage in Japan among rightwing viewers, who say that the film is exaggerated and false, anti-Japan, and distorts history to demonize Japan. Rightwing Japanese critics also joyfully bragged that the film didn’t even do well (despite it being praised by critics, setting the record for biggest opening in South Korea, being the first film in South Korea shown at more than 2,000 movie theaters, and winning more than a dozen awards at film festivals).
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