A commemorative ceremony was held Sunday at a reservoir near
Tokyo to remember the forced World War II Chinese and Korean
laborers who died from hard conditions when working on the
construction site.
The annual ceremony was observed by about 300 participants
consisting of official and civilian representatives from Japan,
China, North and South Korea.
At the beginning of the event, Japanese middle school students
lit up three candles that marked the Chinese, Korean and Japanese
nations.
Representatives addressing the ceremony noted that only by
drawing lessons from history can Japan prevent the tragedy from
recurring.
The Sagami reservoir in the Kanagawa Prefecture was Japan's
first multipurpose artificial lake. More than 3.6 million laborers
worked on the project from 1940 to 1947, including some 300 Chinese
prisoners of war. Harsh working conditions and tortures killed 83
people.
(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2005)