Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japan’s War, 1937–1945 by Brandon Palmer (review)

Any historian who ventures into Korea’s period of Japanese rule risks alienating other scholars regardless of ideological, ethnic, or methodological orientation. Brandon Palmer’s work, however, attempts to provide a balanced analysis of very sensitive programs within the (for the most part) savagely vilified period (1937–45) of wartime mobilization. This history of the institutions and operations of wartime recruitment and mobilization of soldiers and laborers provides ample evidence of victimization, but it stresses as well Korean complicity and agency in the process. Palmer notes on page 11: “economic and social conditions accompanied wartime industrialization that created opportunities for Koreans who cooperated with and worked within the colonial system.” This will not make him any friends within the ranks of Korean nationalist historians. In so saying, Palmer is letting the chips fall where they may. And this balanced, exhaustive, and textured study finds ample evidence for understanding how Koreans were victimized by a surprisingly tentative Japanese state, but how they also found ways to resist, profit from, as well as use the system for personal mobility.

Halfway through the book, I started to wonder about the title. It seems that “mobilizing for the colonizer” might have been a better choice. For the most part, it is not the experience of fighting for the empire that animates this study; rather, it is more an analysis of policy choices, techniques, and timing of both military and labor recruitment and conscription. The Japanese were slow to resort to full-scale recruitment of Koreans for the war effort. Indeed, at the beginning the Japanese need for more bodies for the military was tempered by their own sense that Koreans were poorly equipped educationally, culturally, and linguistically for inclusion in the Imperial Army. Of course this was due to Japanese policies that shortchanged colonial education in the previous decades, as Palmer rightly points out. Moreover, their low opinion of Korean cultural and linguistic skills was also an indictment of the slow pace of assimilation up to the late 1930s. One of the book’s strengths is how it analyzes recruitment policy as it emerged year by year in a swiftly changing context. Palmer is also acutely aware of both sides of the story—Japanese interests, fears, and limitations as well as how Koreans were affected by and viewed the system.

Palmer divides his study into an introduction and four main chapters. The introduction provides the overall colonial context of these recruitment programs; subsequently, three chapters lay out the Korean volunteer soldier system, Korean conscription system, and finally, the story of mobilizing colonial labor. As detailed in chapter 2, “Korean Volunteer Soldier Systems,” Palmer qualifies the prevailing notion of Japanese omnipotence with regard to their colonial subjects. Only after the outbreak of the war in China in 1937 did colonial authorities feel an urgency to turn Koreans from passive subjects into active supporters of the empire. The Movement to Create Imperial Subjects (Kōminka Undō, 1937–38) ushered in an era of increasing governmental intrusion into Korean life. The voluntary soldier system was a part of this broader movement. As presented by Palmer, the system was interestingly very selective and its major problem was finding Korean men who could pass muster to be included within the Imperial Army. Indeed, the Japanese found themselves having to force applications (ultimately receiving hundreds of thousands) only to disqualify 90 per cent on grounds of insufficient education or lack of Japanese speaking ability. This is a fascinating chapter that shows all the restraints to a rapid and full-scale inclusion of Koreans within the Japanese military. It also raises the issue of what Korean service might mean in terms of rights and privileges as truly “integrated” subjects in the empire. Koreans were quick to seize on the link between the ultimate service to the emperor and attaining real equality as subjects.

Another intriguing theme within chapter 2...