(540) Kamikaze

By Andrei Lankov

In October 1944, Allied warships in the Gulf of Leyte faced a new challenge, unlike anything they (or, for that matter, any other navy) had ever before encountered. The ships were attacked by small planes which had been converted into flying bombs. This was how Kamikaze special units operated.

The military effect of the new tactics might have been limited, but the psychological impact was great, so for a while the allied forces even banned any reference to the Kamikaze in the media.

But the Japanese Empire by contrast, with its ethos of self-sacrifice, the deeds of the suicide bombers were much celebrated. The Kamikaze suicide pilots were presented as the embodiment of patriotism with a true fighting spirit.

Korea was no exception. In October 1944 it was learned that among the pilots who died in the first massive Kamikaze attack there was a young corporal named Matsui Hideo. This was not his real name, however: Corporal Matsui was born to the “In” family in Gaeseong, and adopted the Japanese name when the colonial authorities demanded Koreans abandon their old surnames as a sign of their loyalty to the Japanese emperor.

The vast majority did it only because of great pressure, but it is still rather difficult to see Corporal Matsui as an unwilling victim. One does not join suicide units (or, at the very least, does not complete a suicide mission) against one’s will.

The Korean language media in late 1944 greeted the news of Corporal Matsui’s heroic death with the tidal wave of war propaganda. It is remarkable that the wave was joined by people who were (and still are) widely respected in Korea. For example, So Chong-ju, one of the most prominent Korean poets, eulogized the empire’s new martyr in the following ode:

Matsui Hideo! You are our corporal, our pride. You are a Korean from Gaeseong in Gyeonggi Province A 20-year old, a second son of the In family Matsui Hideo! You are a member of the Kamikaze Unit Who has returned home His blue returned spirit Has already come back to us still living Above the sky of our breathing nation Quietly, quietly he has returned.

It was by no means the only eulogy to a suicide bomber. In the last months of colonial rule the Korean press ran countless stories about Corporal Matsui and other Kamikaze Koreans (as we’ll see he was the first but not last Korean pilot to die in such a way).

For example, Yi Kwang-su, the founding father of modern Korean prose and a once prominent pro-independence activist, wrote another poem about the death of the young corporal, published in Sinsidae magazine in December 1944.

So, one should not be surprised to learn that Corporal Matsui was followed by a number of other Koreans. Those people, usually in the early 20s, grew up under the influence of imperial propaganda and came to perceive themselves as Japanese subjects, first and foremost.

So, they wanted to die for their emperor. Nonetheless, they still saw themselves as Korean. In a telling sign, Tak Kyong-hyon, who died in a suicide attack in late May 1945, sang Arirang while boarding his fateful plane.

The list of Korean Kamikaze is probably not complete, but during the last few months of war at least 16 Korean youngsters died on suicide missions (the total losses of the Kamikaze units were just below 4,000). The youngest of them, Pak Tong-hun, posthumously promoted to lieutenant, died on March 29, 1945. He was not even 18 years old. The oldest of the Korean Kamikaze was born in 1918 and was 27 years old.

The story of Korean Kamikazes is seldom mentioned nowadays. It does not fit nicely with the Manichean vision of history, so widely propagated in Korea: a great majority of true patriots versus a tiny fraction of pro-Japanese traitors who were driven solely by greed and opportunism. It is clear that the greedy and the opportunistic do not become suicide bombers; this is the fate of true believers.

Of course, people who extolled their deeds and pushed the young pilots to their deaths can be plausibly seen as opportunists, as some of them eventually proved by changing sides a few more times. But the real picture was far more complicated.

By the late 1930s a significant number of Koreans did come to associate themselves with Japan and its imperialist policy, and some of them even saw themselves as quasi-Japanese.

However, the proponents of the now-dominant (and grossly simplistic) vision of history cannot reconcile themselves with the image of a Korean officer of the Imperial Air Force who volunteered for a suicide mission and went to his death singing Arirang, the symbol of Korean nationalism.

These lessons might soon become very important, since the collapse of the North Korean dictatorship is likely to bring equally paradoxical and unpleasant discoveries. But that will be another story ― and, I suspect, a very discomforting one.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.