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)