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Article: Man honors tortured comrades 52 years later. (D.W. Chang, former Korean forced labor victim under Japanese rule during World War II)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- October 23, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 National Catholic Reporter. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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D.W. Chang, a Korean now living in Grand Rapids, Mich., was 21 years old in 1941. It was his last year of school, and he had just begun an internship at a chemical company in Seoul.
One day at work, the Japanese Army came and took away all the Korean male employees, Chang with them. They were taken to Hanin Island, just off China's southeastern coast. Chang and thousands of other Koreans worked on the island as forced labor for the Japanese army until the end of the war in 1945.
Conditions were horrible. Thousands died of malnutrition and ill treatment. Chang was among the few who survived, but not without scars.
"This is a bad memory," he ...