Tag: Imperial Japan

This is an interesting historical footnote from World War II:

Deep in the forests of southwestern Oregon is a redwood sapling — a peace offering at the site of an act of war.

Friday marks the 81st anniversary of the end of the only enemy aerial bombing campaign to strike the continental United States during World War II. 

The plan was to firebomb the vast forests of America’s northwest in retaliation for the April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. The Japanese hoped their modest effort would torch millions of acres of trees and deprive the U.S. defense industry of tons of wood crucial to the war effort. The Americans would have to send thousands of troops to fight the fires.

Nobuo Fujita, a veteran Japanese Navy pilot, advocated the attack and was given the honor of taking the war to the American home front. 

Twice he would fly his submarine-launched floatplane over the forests near Brookings, Ore., release his bombs and make his way to a rendezvous with the I-25 transport submarine waiting for him off the coast.

Though Fujita did not know it at the time, nearly all the bombs fizzled. An alert student forest ranger stomped out one small flare-up. The wet forest floors took care of the rest.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I would definitely like to view this documentary if it gets released on a streaming channel at some point:

“I wanted to make a film that logically refutes [the distorted historical record.]”These are the words of Lee Suk-jae, who directed the documentary film “Koko Sunyi” about victims of Japanese wartime military sexual slavery. In a recent interview, he pointed out that Japan’s distortion of history is ongoing, which is why he felt the need to make the film. 

Many movies, dramas, TV programs and books related to the so-called comfort women issue have been published so far, but among them, “Koko Sunyi” logically refutes the absurdity of some of the claims of Japan’s far right based on historical data.Much of the information shared in “Koko Sunyi” is based on the Japanese Prisoners of War Interrogation Reports No. 48 and 49 published by the US Office of War Information (OWI), which contains details about the “comfort women” at the time. 

Lee’s film is centered around the life of Grandmother Sun-yi, who was taken to a sexual slavery camp, also known as a “comfort station,” in Myanmar during the war. Lee, who works as an investigative reporter for KBS, found that, among the 20 “comfort women” in Myanmar recorded in the OWI report, a woman with the surname Koko and first name Sun-yi was actually a woman named Park Sun-yi who lived in Hamyang, South Gyeongsang Province.

Hankyoreh

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this interesting read about Lee Hak-rae who was a convicted war criminal from World War II who served as a prison guard during the construction of the Thai-Burma railway line:

The last Korean to be convicted of war crimes after serving in the Japanese military during World War II has died without receiving the apology and compensation he insisted Tokyo owed him for his suffering. Lee Hak-rae, 96, died on Sunday.  (…….)

Interviewed in 1988, Lee said he had never abused prisoners in his charge and that he had been frightened of them because of their stature. 

That claim was undermined by the diaries of Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop, the Australian army colonel who served in the Medical Corps and was captured at Java in 1942. In one passage, Dunlop wrote that he had become so incensed at the brutal treatment by “The Lizard” – the nickname the POWs gave to Lee – that he found a length of wood and hid alongside a jungle path he knew Lee would be taking. His intention was to kill Lee and conceal the body in the undergrowth, but he changed his mind after realising that he and other POWs would be held accountable for Lee’s death. (……)

“The Japanese guards were bad, but the Koreans and the Formosans were the worst,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “These were men who the Japanese looked down on as colonials, so they needed to show they were as good as the Japanese. And they had no one else to take it out on other than us POWs.”

South China Morning Post

You can read more at the link, but Lee after the war was originally sentenced to death for abusing prisoners and on appeal it was reduced to jail time. He ended up serving 11 years in prison and was released in 1956.

It seems to me instead of erasing the history, the Bank of Korea should just put a plaque there explaining the history to people:

Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Lee Ju-yeol said Friday the bank is in talks with the Cultural Heritage Administration to possibly remove the engraving of the word “priority” written in Chinese on the cornerstone of the bank’s former headquarters in downtown Seoul.

“The BOK will be very quick in addressing the issue about Hiromubi Ito’s calligraphy and the strokes slanted down from the left to the bottom right which were found in the two characters of ‘jeong’ and ‘cho’ engraved on the foundation stone. The bank is exploring three options. After thorough discussions with the CHA, the bank will resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” the central bank chief told lawmakers on the sidelines of his participation in this year’s annual Assembly audit of the BOK.

Lee didn’t elaborate further, but he issued a public apology over the matter. The apology came a day after the CHA confirmed the writing engraved on the bank’s former headquarters was Hirobumi Ito’s handwriting. 

Ito was the first resident general of Korea prior to the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of the peninsula. Ito was assassinated by Korean independence activist Ahn Jung-geun in Manchuria in 1909.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Famed Korean author Jo Jung-rae thinks that any Korean who studied in Japan should be prosecuted:

“People who studied in Japan are doomed to become pro-Japanese. They become traitors. Some call them ‘homegrown Japanese pirates’…,” he said during a news conference to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his literary debut at the Press Center in central Seoul. 

“I know there is a campaign going on and it aims to purge Koreans who are sympathetic about Japan regarding its past evil acts and distortion of history. People like them must be punished in accordance to law. I’m willing to actively participate in the campaign.”

His remarks created a stir. 

Critic Chin Jung-kwon said Jo’s remarks reflect “insanity” and “outdated nationalism.” Chin wrote on social media that if all Koreans who spent some years studying in Japan are Japan sympathizers, then President Moon Jae-in’s daughter must be pro-Japanese as she studied at Tokyo’s Kokushikan University. 

Jo is a respected novelist having authored many best-selling books. His award-winning historical fiction work “The Taebaek Mountains” is considered the best novel of the 1980s.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Jo wants to put people in jail who studied in Japan because a group of authors wrote a book based on facts about the Japanese colonial period that dispute much of what Jo has written in his historical fiction books. So instead of disputing the facts he rather have people jailed.

The Japan Times has a long article discussing the legacy 75 years later of the U.S. occupation of Japan. It is good read, here is an excerpt:

What is the Occupation’s legacy? 

The early phase is usually viewed by historians as being a policy and diplomatic success, especially by American officials. On a personal level, Japanese who were children during the era still tell stories of American G.I.s passing out gum, ice cream and chocolate.

American popular culture that arrived with the Occupation troops, from movies to music, blossomed, which added to the view, especially in the U.S., that it was successful. The peaceful reaction to the presence of so many Allied troops by the Japanese people also meant the Occupation did not have to worry about putting down armed rebellions as it attempted to carry out its policies.

Historians in Japan and abroad generally agree that the Occupation accomplished many of its early goals, including disarmament, the repatriation of Japanese forces abroad, the ratification of a new Constitution rooted in democratic values, land reforms, more equal rights for women and a foreign policy that made Japan a close U.S. ally.

But the censorship exercised by the Occupation, the release and return to power of those arrested for war crimes and the crackdown on socialists and communists created problems that lingered long after the Occupation ended. The decision by MacArthur not to try Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal provoked anger among other allied nations.

Japan Times

You can read more at the link, but the article also discusses the continuing legacy of Russia’s occupation of the Kuril Islands that continues to plague relations between the two countries.

That is what some Koreans are saying after this incident at a festival in Yongin:

A Japanese man has ignited controversy for wrapping himself in a Rising Sun flag at the “ULTRA Korea” festival in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on June 7-9. 

The Japanese imperial military used the flag during World War II (1939-45) and the flag is regarded as a symbol of Japan’s wartime aggression. Many Koreans believe the flag should be banned. 

Some Korean participants in the ULTRA Korea, Asia’s largest electronic dance music (EDM) festival, reportedly had “clashes” with the Japanese and reported him to the organization committee. But the committee did not take any tangible action, according to Professor Seo Kyung-duk, a top Korea promoter. 

“The festival officials should have restrained the man. If he had not cooperated, they should have dragged him out,” Seo wrote on his Instagram Tuesday.

“The man will return to Japan and say he had no problem displaying a Rising Sun flag in Korea. The committee should make an official apology and promise to avoid a recurrence,” Seo wrote. 

Korea Times

First of all this Japanese man was clearly trolling for a reaction and he got it.

Anyway the way I look at it is that if the Rising Sun flag is banned in South Korea then the North Korean and Chinese flags should be banned as well. Those two countries killed far more Koreans than Imperial Japan ever did and destroyed nearly the entire country during the Korean War.

This is so anti-Black and imperialist, I can't even. In fact, I'd argue that K-pop, esp the inclusion of rap, is in many ways Koreans adapting Black musical forms as a reaction to their own experiences with racist colonial oppression by Japan. https://t.co/RL1b3ffpxS

— Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🙅🏽‍♀️ 🇧🇧🌈 (@IBJIYONGI) January 9, 2019

Here is the latest dust up between Korea and Japan:

“It’s very regrettable that the Japanese government is continuing to respond excessively to our judiciary’s ruling, and (we) call for its restraint,” the foreign ministry’s spokesman, Noh Kyu-duk, said at a press briefing.

He said it’s natural for an administration to respect a court decision in a democracy.

The ministry called in Japan’s ambassador to Seoul, Yasumasa Nagamine, to deliver a direct protest message.

The ambassador did not answer a reporter’s question while entering the ministry building in Seoul.

I think everyone should be highly skeptical of the claims made by these two men:

On June 1, 2018, Professor Kim Ilsun and Mr. Jeong Choong-je were featured in a live video broadcast about Operation Golden Lily on the TePyung TV YouTube channel. During that broadcast, Mr. Jeong, a nonfiction writer, talked about how there were hundreds of tons of gold ingots buried in the Moonhyun-dong neighborhood of Busan, South Korea. This gold, which was hidden there in 1945 by the Japanese empire, was found on March 2, 2002 by Mr. Jeong. However, Mr. Jeong was then robbed and falsely accused and imprisoned by a group of people who colluded with former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and current occupier of the Blue House Moon Jae-in.  [Tepyung.com]

You can read more at the link, but Professor Kim and Mr. Jeong is claiming that threats are being made against them in response to his book to try and silence him.  The below Youtube video from their lawyer Eugene Kim lays out their claims:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsP8_wAJ4E4

I am highly skeptical of what these two men and their lawyer is claiming without evidence.  For example where in the Moonhyun-dong neighborhood is this tunnel?  Why haven’t third party experts been allowed to examine it?  Did anyone take pictures of the so called gold when it was found?  In 2002 smartphones had not been invented yet, but you would think people would have taken pictures of the gold.  Finally what evidence do they have that Moon Jae-in was even involved if the heist did happen?

When people like this make such sensational claims without hard evidence this actually helps the Korean left make the Korean right look like a bunch crazies and that is what this group looks like right now.