Korea Under Japanese Rule - Koreans in The Japanese Military

Koreans in The Japanese Military

The history of Korean collaboration during the colonial period is an especially difficult topic to engage for both Korean and Japanese historians. The phenomenon of thousands of Koreans volunteering to enlist in the Japanese military does not fit neatly within Korean nationalist historiography, in which Japanese and Korean people are neatly categorized and divided into a binary of "offenders and victims". While Korean historians argue that these soldiers were physically coerced through conscription, the fact remains that prior to 1944, all enlistments were voluntary - though this does not preclude the possibility that "voluntary" on paper could imply undocumented pressures and other forms of duress; furthermore, there is clear testimony from contemporary sources that Japanese regulations with regards to Korea on paper were frequently ignored. Further complicating the history is that many Korean soldiers were just as violent as their Japanese counterparts towards Chinese civilians and Western prisoners, blurring the division between Korean and Japanese people in their victim's eyes.

Starting in 1938, Koreans both enlisted and were conscripted into the Japanese military and the first "Korean Voluntary" Unit was formed. Among notable Korean personnel in the Imperial Army was Crown Prince Euimin, who attained the rank of lieutenant general. Some later gained administrative posts in the government of South Korea; well-known examples include Park Chung Hee, who became president of South Korea, Chung Il-Kwon (정일권,丁一權), prime minister from 1964 to 1970, and Paik Sun-Yup, South Korea's youngest general, famous for his defense of the Pusan Perimeter during the Korean War. The first ten of the Chiefs of Army Staff of South Korea graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and none from the Korean Liberation Army.

Recruitment began as early as 1938, when the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria began accepting pro-Japanese Korean volunteers into the army of Manchukuo, and formed the Gando Special Force. Koreans in this unit specialized in counter-insurgency operations against communist guerillas in the region of Jiandao. The size of the unit grew considerably at an annual rate of 700 men, and included such notable Koreans as General Paik Sun-Yup, who served in the Korean War. Historian Philip Jowett noted that during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Gando Special Force "earned a reputation for brutality and was reported to have laid waste to large areas which came under its rule."

During World War II, American soldiers frequently encountered Korean soldiers within the ranks of the Japanese army. Most notably was in the Battle of Tarawa, which was considered during that time to be one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. military history. A fifth of the Japanese garrison during this battle consisted of Korean laborers who were trained in combat roles. Like their Japanese counterparts, they put up a ferocious defense and fought to the death.

The Japanese, however, did not always believe they could rely on Korean laborers to fight alongside them. In Prisoners of the Japanese, author Gaven Daws wrote, "n Tinian there were five thousand Korean laborers and so as not to have hostiles at their back when the Americans invaded, the Japanese killed them."

Starting in 1944, Japan started conscription of Koreans into the armed forces. All Korean males were drafted to either join the Imperial Japanese Army, as of April 1944, or work in the military industrial sector, as of September 1944. Before 1944, 18,000 Koreans passed the examination for induction into the army. Koreans provided workers to mines and construction sites around Japan. The number of conscripted Koreans reached its peak in 1944 in preparation for war. From 1944, about 200,000 Korean males were inducted into the army.

After the war, 148 Koreans were convicted of Class B and C war crimes, 23 of whom were sentenced to death (compared to 920 Japanese who were sentenced to death), including Korean prison guards who were particularly notorious for their brutality during the war. The figure is relatively high considering that ethnic Koreans made up a very small percentage of the Japanese military. Justice Bert Röling, who represented the Netherlands at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, noted that "many of the commanders and guards in POW camps were Koreans - the Japanese apparently did not trust them as soldiers - and it is said that they were sometimes far more cruel than the Japanese." In his memoirs, Colonel Eugene C. Jacobs wrote that during the Bataan Death March, "the Korean guards were the most abusive. The Japs didn't trust them in battle, so used them as service troops; the Koreans were anxious to get blood on their bayonets; and then they thought they were veterans." Korean guards were sent to the remote jungles of Burma, where Lt. Col. William A. (Bill) Henderson wrote from his own experience that some of the guards overlooking the construction of the Burma Railway "were moronic and at times almost bestial in their treatment of prisoners. This applied particularly to Korean private soldiers, conscripted only for guard and sentry duties in many parts of the Japanese empire. Regrettably, they were appointed as guards for the prisoners throughout the camps of Burma and Siam." The highest-ranking Korean to be prosecuted after the war was Lieutenant General Hong Sa-Ik, who was in command of all the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in the Philippines.

In 2002, South Korea started an investigation of Japanese collaborators. Part of the investigation was completed in 2006 and a list of names of individuals who profited from exploitation of fellow Koreans were posted. The collaborators not only benefited from exploiting their countrymen, but the children of these collaborators benefited further by acquiring higher education with the exploitation money they had amassed.

The "Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under the Japanese Imperialism Republic of Korea" investigated the received reports for damage from 86 people among the 148 Koreans who were accused of being the level B and C war criminals while serving as prison guards for the Japanese military during World War II. The commission, which was organized by the South Korean government, announced that they acknowledge 83 people among them as victims. The commission said that although the people reluctantly served as guards to avoid the draft, they took responsibility for mistreatment by the Japanese against prisoners of war. Lee Se-il, leader of the investigation, said that examination of the military prosecution reports for 15 Korean prison guards, obtained from The National Archives of the United Kingdom, confirmed that they were convicted without explicit evidence.