Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japan's War, 1937-1945

1. Korea’s Mobilization in Context

15 Japan’s wartime mobilization of Korea during the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945) was an unprecedented event in Korean history that affected every aspect of its society and economy: Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were uprooted and sent overseas to work and fight in foreign countries, Japanese and Korean industries proliferated throughout the peninsula, and state control extended more completely to the local levels. Korea underwent social and economic change that greatly effected subsequent history. Remarkably, despite the extent of this mobilization, the Korean nation was, by Japanese standards, not prepared for the demands placed upon it by the Japanese war machine. In order to better understand the unpreparedness of Korea, and its position within the Japanese wartime empire, it is necessary to review the history of colonial Korea. The Colonial Government: Its Character and Power Japan made Korea a protectorate in 1905 and a colony in 1910, establishing the Government-General of Korea (GGK) as the sole policymaking organ in Korea with legislative, judicial, and executive powers. The GGK was a powerful, highly institutionalized bureaucratic regime headed by a governor-general who was appointed by the central government in Tokyo. The GGK generally acted independently of the cabinet and diet, but on matters of importance worked in conjunction with them to determine colonial policies, especially after the outbreak of war with the United States. The nature of Japan’s colonization of Korea, like all colonial ventures, was designed to politically, economically, and strategically bolster the 1 Korea’s Mobilization in Context | CHAPTER 1 16 colonizer, often at the expense of the colony. Japan’s demands on Korea grew increasingly burdensome over the thirty-five years Korea was a colony. Initially, Japanese colonization was a preventive measure to forbid Korea’s colonization by another imperial power; later, Korea became a supplier of raw materials to the Japanese metropole as well as a market for Japanese products. In the 1910s, Japan acquired Korean land for Japanese farmers; in the 1920s, it exploited Korea for rice; in the 1930s, it requisitioned labor for Japanese-owned industries; and in the 1940s, it asked Koreans to sacrifice their lives for the Japanese empire. Yet the GGK invested insufficient resources in the prewar era to prepare Korean society for industrial and martial contributions to a total war. The GGK, like most structures of domination, was not static. The colonial administration was not a unified, single-minded organism; instead it was plagued by innumerable contradictions and internal debates.1 It adapted to new circumstances in response to Japan’s evolving economic and political needs. Japan utilized wartime policies and organizations to meet its own needs, but the use of Korean human resources was mitigated by a fear of igniting Korean nationalism, pushing Koreans into the arms communist agitators, or sparking another demonstration similar to the March First Independence Movement in 1919. Japan’s rule in Korea was predicated upon a strong military presence. In fact, all governor-generals were career generals or admirals. The Imperial Japanese Army stationed an army unit in Korea (Chōsen-gun, referred to hereafter as the Korean Army) to safeguard Japanese rule. The blatant use of force early in the colonial period, as well as the Koreans’ long-standing animosity toward Japan, culminated in Korean resistance to colonial rule. The two largest movements for Korean independence were the “righteous armies” (K: ŭibyŏng) and the March First Movement. From 1907 to 1912, small bands of righteous armies took up arms to fight against Japan’s colonization of Korea. Upwards of 17,600 Korean soldiers and civilians were killed during the suppression of these armed groups. After the formal colonization of Korea, effective policing rooted out most nationalist resistance, with notable exceptions. The second movement, the March First Independence Movement of 1919, was a peaceful peninsula-wide demonstration with nearly a million participants. Demonstrators hoped, in vain, to win international recogni- Korea's Mobilization in Context | 17 tion for Korean self-determination, in accordance with Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. The Japanese military and police brutally suppressed this demonstration, killing at least 553 demonstrators and arresting another 12,000.2 These two incidents, and numerous smaller ones, reflect Koreans’ widespread discontent with Japanese colonial rule. More importantly, Japan’s leaders recognized that Japan could not rely solely on naked coercion to govern Korea; instead, the colonial regime needed Korean agents to gain the compliance of other Koreans. In Korea...