Suh Jung Woo

The following is an excerty from HASHIMA: THE GHOST ISLAND by Brian Burke-Gaffney on Woo's plight as a slave labor in Mitsubishi-run Hashima island (nicknamed Gunkanjima (Battleship Island))'s coal mines:

The island was surrounded by high concrete walls, and there was ocean, nothing but ocean, all around. It was crowded with concrete buildings as high as nine stories... We Koreans were lodged in buildings on the edge of the island. Seven or eight of us were put together in a tiny room, giving each person no more than a few feet of space. The buildings were made of reinforced concrete and had mortar on the outside, but the interior was filthy and falling apart... We were given uniforms like rice bags to wear and forced to begin work the morning after arrival. We were constantly watched and ordered around by Japanese guards, some of whom were wearing swords.

The mine was deep under the sea, the workers reaching it by elevator down a long narrow shaft. The coal was carried out from a spacious underground chamber, but the digging places were so small that we had to crouch down to work. It was excruciating, exhausting labor. Gas collected in the tunnels, and the rock ceilings and walls threatened to collapse at any minute. I was convinced that I would never leave the island alive. Four or five workers in fact died every month in accidents. Modern concepts of safety were nonexistent. The corpses were cremated on Nakanoshima, the little island beside Hashima.

Despite this oppressive labor, our meals consisted simply of 80% bean dregs and 20% brown rice boiled together with whole sardines into a formless mush. Almost every day I suffered from diarhhea, and my strength gradually drained away. But if I tried to rest, the guards would come and force me to work... I don't know how many times I thought of jumping into the sea and drowning myself...

Forty or fifty of my fellow Koreans committed suicide or drowned while trying to swim to Takahama [on the coast]. I can't swim. But I was lucky. After five months I was transferred to the Mitsubishi factory in Saiwai-machi, Nagasaki and thus was able to leave the island. If I had stayed, I am certain that I would not be alive today.

There were already about 200 Koreans on the island when we arrived, so in total there were probably 500 or 600. We were all crammed together in a two-story building with five rooms on each floor and four four-story buildings with five or six rooms on each floor. It still wrings my heart to think about those other Koreans. Today people call Hashima "Battleship Island," but for us it was the "Prison Island" of no escape.

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(Last Updated: January 15, 2004.)