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A4 1P（210mm × 297mm )Source: Eiichi Hirai (ed.), History of the Sado Mines (Vol. II), original text

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A4 1P（210mm × 297mm )Commentary on History of the Sado Mines (Vol. II)
We at the Historical Awareness Research Committee have obtained and published A History ofthe Sado Mines in Two Volumes, a primary source document edited by Hirai Eiichi, whichshows that the Sado Island gold and silver mines were not the site of Korean forced labor.
Compiled in 1950, this document is a hitherto unpublished manuscript in which Hirai Eiichi, aformer mining section chief at the Sado Mines who managed its mining plants, summarized thehistory of the Sado Mines across two volumes spanning from the Edo to the Showa period at therequest of the president of Mitsubishi Metals.
Although both a manuscript and a facsimile for this historical document exist, it is only now
that the work is finally being released to the public. On January 26, 2022, the Historical
Awareness Research Committee obtained the table of contents and a photograph of “Article 9:
The Circumstances of Korean Laborers” on pages 844-846 of the manuscript and publishedthem on the Committee homepage.
However, the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan, a South Korean
government agency that is conducting field surveys and research in a bid to prevent theregistration of the Sado Mines as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, received thisdocument from “an anonymous Japanese researcher” earlier this year on January 14.
This researcher reportedly obtained it in August 2015 from the World Heritage Registration
Promotion Office in the Cultural Affairs Department of the Education Bureau of Niigata
Prefecture. (This is according to the paper “New Material: Hirai Eiichi’s A History of the Sado

Mines” by Jeong Hye-Gyeong (ARGO Institute for Research in Humanities), recorded in thereference material of the aforementioned foundation’s January 27 webinar titled “How Japan’sWorld Heritage Registration Distorts the History of Forced Labor at the Sado Mines”).
Written utilizing internal documents from the Sado mining plants, A History of the Sado

Mines discloses previously unknown data on the total number of Koreans mobilized every year
as well as the number that remained at the end of the war as follows.
“We recruited a total of 1,519 workers from Korea to come and work at the mines: 98 inFebruary 1940, 248 in May, 300 in December,280 in 1941, 79 in 1942, 263 in 1944, and 251 in
1945. Of these 1,519 workers, 1,096 were immediately repatriated following the end of thewar. ”
In addition, as briefly summarized below, not only was the treatment of these Korean laborers
the same as that of domestic Japanese workers, but management took great care in treating thelaborers well, such as by providing them with lodgings and meals.
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A4 1P（210mm × 297mm )・Wages were equal to those of domestic Japanese laborers.
・Payment was calculated based on output.
・Twice-yearly bonuses for diligence, as well as bonuses for attendance, were provided basedon performance.
・Free company housing was provided for those with family, as well as low prices for daily
necessities such as rice, miso, and soy sauce.
・For those who were single, the dormitory, utilities, and bathhouses were provided free ofcharge, meals were provided for \0.5 JPY per day (with the company paying the difference
between actual cost for meals and price charged to laborers), and vegetables were supplied
from a farm directly managed by the company.
・Each laborer was enrolled in a life insurance plan with premiums paid in full by the company.
・Movie screenings, lectures, excursions, and sporting events were organized.
・Magazines, Korean shogi boards, gramophones, and radios were placed in the dormitories.

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