China urges Japan to properly settle Chinese forced laborers issue

Three representatives of Chinese victims of forced laborers during World War II attend a press conference in Beijing, June 1, 2016. [Photo by Jin Shuo/China News Service]

BEIJING - China urged Japan to properly deal with the issue of Chinese forced laborers in World War II as Mitsubishi Materials Corp. has offered to apologize and compensate nearly 4,000 Chinese victims.

The deal was signed in Beijing earlier Wednesday by Mitsubishi Materials and three Chinese nationals on behalf of the thousands of wartime Chinese forced to work in labor camps in Japan.

Mitsubishi Materials will pay compensation of 100,000 yuan ($15,000) for each of the 3,765 Chinese laborers. The company also said it would continue to probe into those who were forced into labor during the war, but have not been officially accounted for in records.

"Forced laborers and slave workers represent a serious crime committed by the Japanese militarism in its foreign aggression and colonial rule," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

She called on Japan to be responsible for history and appropriately handle the outstanding issues of forced laborers.

At least 39,000 Chinese people were forcibly brought to Japan from China, which nowadays would be considered mass-kidnapping and human trafficking, between 1943 and 1945, and were forced into exceedingly hard labor.