This summer I visited several monuments in Hiroshima and Okinawa that console the souls of Koreans who died during the Pacific War while living in Japan or serving in the Japanese military. It was a heart-wrenching experience.
Among the monuments I visited, the cenotaph in Hiroshima is dedicated to about 20,000 Koreans who perished in the Aug. 6, 1945, U.S. atomic bombing. In Okinawa, the monument in Itoman is dedicated to about 10,000 Koreans. Memorials in the village of Tokashiki, the city of Ginowan and the village of Yomitan are dedicated to Korean civilian workers recruited by the Japanese military and Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.
Mournful inscriptions on the memorials describe how the Koreans were forcibly recruited to work for the wartime Japan, experienced extreme hardships and died without returning to their homeland.