A South Korean's unwanted war legacy from Japan

[unreal.livejournal.com]

In 1944, he was abducted from his village by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II camp. In 2005, he learned he was mistakenly listed among Japan's war dead at a Tokyo shrine.

Kim Hui-jong, 86, of South Korea, has been trying to get Japan to remove his name from a list of that country's World War II dead: “I never fought for the Japanese; I was a forced laborer."

For most of his life, Kim Hui-jong has kept what he considers a shameful secret. In 1944, as a teenager, he was abducted from his village in northern Korea by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II military camp on the island of Saipan.


It would take him a decade of marriage to tell his wife about his past. Kim, 86, still often dreams of the battlefield shelling that severely damaged his hearing and the taunts of his captors: "You Koreans are like canned meat; we can take you anywhere and use you as we see fit."

He always considered his Japanese enslavement, and the two years he later spent as a U.S. prisoner of war, as a lifelong humiliation. Then, in 2005, Kim received a new insult he insists he still cannot bear: For decades, the former conscript learned, he has been counted among Japan's war dead and, because of an administrative error, his name is listed at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni shrine. He could no longer remain silent.

Many view Yasukuni as a symbol of Japanese militarist values that led millions to their deaths. Worse, Kim and other critics say, Shinto priests who control the shrine list Japanese leaders executed as war criminals in its ranks of the dead.

Located in the center of Tokyo, the 142-year-old shrine — with its soothing lanterns and elegant rice-paper walls — each year draws millions of visitors who tour its temples and adjoining war museum. Over the years, Tokyo politicians paying their respects to the deceased soldiers have angered Chinese and South Koreans who suffered under Japanese occupation.

But none, perhaps, more than Kim. A slim man with delicate features, Kim recently sat on the bed of his home in a working-class Seoul neighborhood, furious over his inclusion at Yasukuni.

"I never fought for the Japanese; I was a forced laborer," he said, his voice weak after recent heart surgery. "This has brought me so much shame. It's a personal and national dishonor. I am neither a war criminal nor a dead man."

In 2007, Kim filed a lawsuit against the Yasukuni shrine and the Japanese government, demanding they remove his name and those of four other forced laborers from Korea.

Three times the men went to Tokyo to testify, always gathering at the shrine for protests. On one visit, a Japanese reporter asked Kim his opinion of the memorial.

"I told her she wasn't going to like my answer," he said. "I said I wanted to light a truckload of gasoline there, that I'd feel satisfied if they dropped not one but two atomic bombs on the place."

***

For more than three decades, between 1910 and 1945, Japan colonized the Korean peninsula — its soldiers occupying what is today both North and South Korea. One morning in 1944, during a walk in his village outside Pyongyang, Kim had a life-changing run-in with the occupying military.

A Japanese soldier waved him over, barking commands. A Japanese-language student in his youth, Kim said, he immediately grasped what had befallen him. He was being conscripted.

Kim was ordered to join tens of thousands of other young Koreans to assist the Japanese military. He was soon aboard a flotilla of ships heading toward Saipan.

Never issued a gun, he dug ditches and tunnels, he recalled, adding that he escaped torture by guards because he quickly understood their orders. During one U.S. attack, Kim recalled, the conscripts were ordered to run for nearby caves to avoid capture by the Americans.

"One conscript stopped me," he said. "He said: 'Don't go there. The Japanese are going to lock you all in and dynamite the cave.' " But in the fog of battle, the Korean workers were spared.

In another U.S. attack, a shell exploded near Kim's head, shattering his eardrums. On June 19, 1944, he and hundreds of other Koreans were captured as noncombatant prisoners.

For two years, Kim served as a U.S. prisoner of war. He showed his "Individual P.O.W. Labor Record" with the amount of pay for his labors in U.S. internment camps.

One day at a camp in Hawaii, he recalled, a U.S. soldier told him to go home. When Kim questioned him, the American held up his arms in the symbol of surrender, saying the Japanese had given up.

His eyes teared at the memory.

The U.S. government flew him back to Seoul, where he carved out an ordinary life, though scarred by his wartime suffering. He worked as a low-level government employee until his retirement in 1973. "He could never get promoted — his hearing always held him back," said his wife, Hui-boon, 79, who communicates with her husband by shouting in his ear.

In 2005, a South Korean documentary film team informed him of his inclusion at Yasukuni and helped pay for several visits to the Japanese court and for the Yasukuni protests. Upon learning of his intent to see his name deleted, Kim said, workers wouldn't allow him to enter the temple to observe his nameplate among the 2.4 million listed there.

Yasukuni officials did not respond to interview requests. But in the past, Shinto priests have insisted that they hold complete religious autonomy on who is enshrined at Yasukuni, where officials call the inclusion "permanent and irreversible."

Kim Min-cheol, director of the Korea Council for Redress and Reparation for the Victims of World War II Atrocities, says the names of 21,000 Korean conscripts are included at Yasukuni, but that Kim is the only one still alive. Since the lawsuit was filed in 2007, the other four living conscripts listed there have died.

"Yasukuni is a symbol of imperialism," he said. "To include conscripted Koreans is enslaving the spirit of the deceased. They won't be able to find peace, even in death."

***

Last month, Kim's wait ended with a phone call from Korean activists. A Japanese court had rejected his request.

Kim's inclusion at the shrine, a judge explained, "was an unavoidable mix-up by the shrine, and does not infringe upon his human rights and moral interests."

Japanese press reports said Tokyo courts have dismissed similar lawsuits, ruling that the Japanese constitution guarantees religious freedom. Judges believed they had no jurisdiction over Yasukuni, which is a religious shrine, the reports said.

One of Kim's Japanese lawyers blasted the ruling, telling reporters: "I feel ashamed as a Japanese citizen."

Kim said he would appeal. Talking about the case, his soft eyes harden. "When I talked with the Japanese court, I said, 'I may be an old man, but I'm still alive,' " Kim said. "I asked, 'Why am I enshrined among the dead?' "

Source: latintimes

Comments

[lee-chikin.livejournal.com]

I can partly understand his feelings, but the "I wanted to light a truckload of gasoline there, that I'd feel satisfied if they dropped not one but two atomic bombs on the place." was uncalled for. >:(

[ababobaby.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised he was honest about it. I can't really blame him though. I've had thoughts about something so horrid through anger and disgust. I just hope that his mind and heart would rest in peace.

[funkaliciousss.livejournal.com]

lol you are making it sound like he is dead which is half of what he is so angry about.

[ababobaby.livejournal.com]

uh no, with him saying such thing, i just want him to find peace with himself

[funkaliciousss.livejournal.com]

well you want his mind and heart to 'rest in peace'.

[ababobaby.livejournal.com]

could've worded that better but i'm lacking in vocab sorry

[hellafun.livejournal.com]

you can't put that against him, he was a victim of war. no one would understand what he went through, lest you're a victim yourself. plus, it's his personal opinion, he isn't imposing it on anyone else.

[jetaime-pyon.livejournal.com]

i was just going to write about the atomic bomb remark as well. there was such a vast amount of people that suffered from the a-bombs, and i have read so many tear-jerking memoirs about it. i think that's a very horrible thing to say.

[lyto.livejournal.com]

Gonna play devil's advocate right here, don't shoot me: have you read about how people suffered during WWII under Japanese occupation? The horrible things that the Japanese put most of Asia through? and the consequent denial by the Japanese government about some of them? I think he's saying that he wants the monument destroyed, whatever way possible and as permanently as possible, and he's justified in saying that.

[jetaime-pyon.livejournal.com]

of course i read those accounts as well. but i don't understand why you find the need to play the blame game here. the people that died by the hands of the a-bombs were innocent civilians and had nothing to do with tormenting others, i should say. i understand that those that were tortured during occupation were civilians too. but two wrongs don't make a right. i am just pointing out that the man needn't have made that remark to make his point, because it comes off as very offensive. that's like a japanese man going to dokdo and saying that a japanese occupation needs to strike dokdo. the man of course is justified in saying he wants that monument destroyed. but he should have been more careful with his wordings.

[jetaime-pyon.livejournal.com]

actually, i realize my comparison to dokdo is very horrible, i'm sorry. but i don't know how else to explain it, in terms of where allegiances lie, that it would be accurate. there are many unnecessary things people say when they are angry and fired up, and i am guessing that was the case with him. but the consequences of an a-bomb... or any bomb and gunfire at all... he should of all people realize how dire and painful the consequences are, emotionally..

this is not to say of course that i don't agree with him on the action they should be taking with the monument! they need to etch those names of asap, because that is quite messed up. having your name written as if you were a dead man, siding with your enemies, and making you feel like a traitor.. it's all in the wrong. the only problem i had was with the a-bomb line.. nothing else.

[lyto.livejournal.com]

...I was thinking, attacking an island and bringing down a monument are two very different things...lol

He's 80 some years old, suffered through horrors we can't even possibly begin to imagine, I just don't think it's right to bag on him for wording. and who knows, there could've been things lost in translation.

[lilykt7.livejournal.com]

partly understand his feelings? tell me what was it like to be enslaved for years and treated like an animal, not knowing if you were going to die the next day? If you can't then no. You don't understand his feelings. Obviously bombing the place would be wrong, but you can't even begin to understand the place where his feelings come from. thats raw human emotion right there and i wouldn't judge him for it. its built up from years of anger and humiliation and its probably the only outlet he has at voicing his frustration with japans refusal to take his name off.

[lydzi.livejournal.com]

IA but then again... shouldn't he, of all people, understand what the war and bombs therefore can do?

I'm not trying to stir a controversy and all. This is certainly not my point here. I just find the all thing so so so very sad. I wish the man would just find some peace at heart but that is just a wish. The fact that he still can utter such words (because you can feel it in his words... the real raw anger)... Idk.

Japan not facing his past has always baffled me. They need to. Make movies, write books, speak about it, whatever, but bottling up and doing like it never hapenned is never good.

[lilykt7.livejournal.com]

he's not pretending it never happened, he's going to court, hiring a japanese lawyer, and fighting to get his name taken off. What he said obviously wasn't right but im just saying i wouldn't judge him too hard for it and i wouldn't let that one comment get in the way of understanding the rest of his story.

[funkaliciousss.livejournal.com]

lol and yet you are acting like you do understand him.

[lilykt7.livejournal.com]

how? i said PROBABLY the only outlet he has, thats me taking his words and realizing that i can't understand where their coming from. im not gonna judge him for it cause theres a history there i don't now about.

[funkaliciousss.livejournal.com]

hmm ok. if you say so. i just find all accusations of how one can never understand another's 'raw human emotions' highly hypocritical cause it's not like you yourself would ever understand what they went through yourself so why are you ratting on others here?

[cruel-disorder.livejournal.com]

I think he wants the physical monument destroyed in the most destructive way possible, not that he wants to cause the deaths that the atomic bombs did. Honestly, speaking as someone whose grandfather's parents were killed by the Japanese military, I can't rationally tell him not to hold a grudge against the Japanese in this day and age. There is no possible way I can understand his feelings and the grief he experienced then.

Now if this man had the power to put his words into action and bomb the memorial I would have much stronger objections but this is an old man whose life was irreparably damaged by what the Japanese military did to him. I'm more inclined to give him a pass on this one. Especially given the decision of the Tokyo courts.

[noneko.livejournal.com]

I think that policing the feelings of a man who was essentially a slave for years under brutal conditions is uncalled for.

[orenji13.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine the amount of humiliation that this man has to carry...

FIGHTING Kim Hui Jong!!

[lydzi.livejournal.com]

What people can do to others during a war is just incredible. I do get why he is so angry about this but calling atomicbombs on any parts of Earth is quite extreme. Let's just say it was a figure of speech because he feels very much about the all thing :/.

[ababobaby.livejournal.com]

What he had to go through breaks my heart.

I hope he finds inner peace.

[funkaliciousss.livejournal.com]

this is tragic news. :( yasukuni needs to stop!

[lilykt7.livejournal.com]

they need to remove his name. he doesn't look like he has long, its the least japan could do for him before he dies.

[hellafun.livejournal.com]

Japan has caused so much casualties in war, the millions of Chinese dead from their invasion, the casualties of the Philippine-Japan war, and of this. of course they aren't the only culprit, yet you can't help but frown upon their ways from before; they desecrated the dead, raped the women, and was generally inhumane. then instead of owning up to their ways, they try to cover it up.

[seobyo.livejournal.com]

oh...my...gosh...

i have no words.

[hellafun.livejournal.com]

I have heard of this before, but never knew about the unit itself. it's similar to the holocaust, where they also carried out human experiments, looking for different ways to kill. It's just baffling how they were able to deliberately carry these things to fellow human beings, without even the slightest concern for the suffering their victims experienced.

[manicmidnights.livejournal.com]

oh my god i couldn't get through the 1st part! it's just very vivid and whenever i think that that was possibly what my elder family members went through i just feel so angered.

[ayamefan13.livejournal.com]

I feel sick just reading it...

[geniebsmart.livejournal.com]

Lord have mercy~
I couldn't even get pass the first part about...about...ugh, I can't even repeat it T___T

[hzuki.livejournal.com]

The most infuriating part is how it lists people who got got off for free and just moved on with their lives. How could they live with themselves?

[wushuhimexx.livejournal.com]

I can't help but feel ridiculously angry when I think about what happened during the Rape of Nanking. The Forgotten Holocaust indeed.

[fallingstarryuu.livejournal.com]

And people wonder why they didn't let the Japanese politicians into Korea. It sparked a lot of bad feelings amongst the Koreans.

[robinamori.livejournal.com]

that's so sad. i feel like crying.