Aso Mining Yoshikuma Coal Mine Ruins

The Yoshikuma coal mine (吉隈炭鉱) was one of several mines operated by Aso Mining (麻生鉱業) in the Chikuho coalfield of Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu. The Aso family's involvement in coal mining dates to 1872, when Aso Takichi, a village headman (庄屋) in Kama District, entered the coal business. The company was incorporated as Aso Shoten (麻生商店) in 1918 and renamed Aso Mining (麻生鉱業) in 1941. The Aso family later became one of Japan's most prominent political dynasties—Aso Taro served as Prime Minister (2008–2009) and Deputy Prime Minister / Finance Minister (2012–2021).

During World War II, the Yoshikuma mine became a site of forced labor on two fronts. From 1939, Korean civilians were brought to Aso Mining operations under Japan's wartime labor mobilization system. According to a 1944 survey by the Fukuoka Prefectural Government on 'relocated Korean workers,' conditions were so severe that 4,919 out of 7,996 total workers (61.5%) fled the Aso mines. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 10,000 Korean laborers were put to work across Aso Mining's operations, enduring dangerous work with dynamite in suffocating underground tunnels; a South Korean newspaper report has claimed that one or two workers died each day.

In the final months of the war, the Yoshikuma mine also held Allied prisoners of war. Fukuoka POW Branch Camp #26 was established at the mine on May 10, 1945, holding 300 prisoners: 197 Australians, 101 British, and 2 Dutch. POWs were forced to work 12-hour shifts in the mine wearing only loincloths in stifling heat, with regular cave-ins, inadequate food, and rags for clothing. Two Australian POWs—John Watson and Leslie Edgar George Wilkie—died during their captivity at the mine.

The forced labor history gained international attention when Aso Taro became Foreign Minister (2005) and later Prime Minister (2008). The Japanese Foreign Ministry initially denied any record of POW labor at the Aso mines, but on December 18, 2008, the government confirmed that 300 Allied POWs had indeed been used at the Yoshikuma mine. Surviving Australian POWs and their families demanded an apology, but both Aso and the company declined. A 1936 gas explosion at the mine had previously killed 29 workers, underscoring the hazardous conditions that persisted throughout the mine's operation.

Today, the mine site at Yoshikuma in Keisen Town (桂川町), Kaho District, retains remnants of the former coal mining infrastructure. The broader Chikuho coalfield region, once Japan's largest coal-producing area supplying over half the nation's coal, saw all its mines close by the mid-1970s. The Yoshikuma mine ruins stand as a regional memorial to the forced laborers—Korean, Australian, British, and Dutch—who suffered there.