Slave laborers: Japan, businesses owe us

Japan's government and businesses should apologize to and compensate all the laborers who were forced to work in Japan during World War II, Chinese survivors of the forced labor and Japanese activists said in Tokyo on Monday.

"We went through thick and thin. The cruelty and brutality at a mine in Fukuoka are unforgettable," Yan Yucheng, 90, a survivor of forced labor, said in a choked voice.

Yan was kidnapped in a village in Hebei province in April 1942 when he was 15. Along with his uncle and 17 other kidnapped Chinese farmers, he was sent by the Japanese military to southwest Japan's Kyushu. He survived the slave-like conditions and went back to China in December 1945. Having no news about him, Yan's mother suffered mental disorders.