Labor Exploitation and Sufferings of Inmates (1933)
Labor Exploitation and Sufferings of Inmates(1933)
The first goal of Suho Masasue, who became the 4th Director in 1933, was set at expansion projects. As the first step, he built a brick factory with production capacity of 100,000 per round and 1.4 million per year. Inpatients were mobilized for arduous and rough jobs, including manufacturing bricks, loading and unloading materials, transporting aggregates, building roads, and papering walls under the project.
Another large-scale expansion project began as the number of inpatients surged after the completion of the first expansion project. The second expansion project, which spanned one year, resulted in construction of 42 lodgings for hospital staff, two warehouses, and the coastal road of Sorokdo.
While life of patients became devastated due to starvation and forced labor amid the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Director Suho pushed for the third expansion project. Patients, who were already burdened with jobs of making and baking bricks, had to overextend themselves as they were also mobilized for sanitorium expansion works.
However, their ordeal and sufferings did not end here.
Even incapable inpatients were forced to collect pine resins of 6,000kg per year. Patients were also mobilized for war supplies production including making 300,000 gamani (straw bags) per year from 500 units of straw bag machines purchased in 1941, manufacturing 1,500 sheets of rabbit skin per year, and producing 30,000 bags of charcoal.
