1945 Ukishima Maru sinking: Japan provides South Korea partial list of passengers of doomed ship

Seoul:  Japan has provided South Korea with a part of the list of passengers in a controversial 1945 deadly explosion and sinking of a Japanese vessel known to have killed thousands of Koreans aboard, Seoul officials said Thursday.

The Ukishima Maru sank in waters off the Aomori Prefecture in August 1945 following an explosion in the hull. The ship was transporting Koreans, many of whom were forcibly mobilised for wartime labour, back to their homeland then, as Korea was liberated from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, Yonhap news agency reported.

For the first time, Japan gave some 19 cases of materials relating to the Korean passenger list and promised it would provide South Korea with further details once it concludes its internal review process, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

The move came as South Korea requested Japan provide the relevant materials related to the Ukishima Maru explosion.

The ship, which belonged to the Japanese Navy, had departed from a port in the Aomori Prefecture on August 22, 1945, and was to make a port call in Kyoto two days later, but it sank in the water after an explosion in the lower part of the hull.

Japan had announced that the ship hit an underwater mine and 524 out of 3,700 passengers were killed in what it called an accident.

But the bereaved family members of the Korean victims claim more than 3,000 lost their lives, out of as many as 8,000 people aboard, and have charged that Japan intentionally blew up the ship.

Japan, for many years, did not acknowledge the existence of the passenger list, insisting that it was lost in the sinking. But in May, it was revealed during a lower house session that there are approximately 70 documents tagged as “passenger lists and related records”.

The controversy has grown as Tokyo has done little to salvage the ship or recover the remains of the victims.

Survivors and bereaved family members filed a lawsuit in Japan in 1992, accusing the Japanese government of neglecting safety management obligations, but they ultimately lost the case in 2004.

–IANS