Disgrace, oppression and hunger
By Yi Woo-won
Korea was annexed by imperial Japan in August 1910, professedly by a treaty which was just a cover for Japanese political machinations and armed intimidation. Next, the Korean king was forced to abdicate and the Korean Empire was totally abolished in the same month, causing the 518-year history of the Joseon Kingdom to come to an end. Japan virtually obliterated Korea as a nation.
The humiliating incident in history took place during the reign of Japanese Emperor Hirohito who acceded to the throne in 1926 at the age of 25. Japan's colonial rule continued for the next 35 years.
Japan's aggressive military expansionism proceeded in the initial years of Hirohito's empire, starting with the invasion of China in the 1930s followed by incursions into other parts of Asia. I still remember vividly two political slogans that the Japanese chanted, carrying placards saying: “Naisenittai” (Koreans and Japanese are one flesh) and “Taitowa kyoeiken” (Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity). Japan attempted to assimilate Koreans into the Japanese Empire to reinforce its military might.
Furthermore, Japan's misjudgment eventually instigated it to launch a surprise attack by “kamikaze” (divine wind) fighter bombers on the U.S. 7th fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941. The sneaky, unprovoked assault, which destroyed many battleships and airplanes with heavy casualties, brought the U.S. into World War II, declaring war on Japan
The war in the Pacific was one of the toughest and bloodiest wars in history. But after four years of conflict, a turning point finally came for American forces. American bombers dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, and Japan realized it could not win the war. Again, Emperor Hirohito was the one who stopped the war by telling his loyal subjects of Japan's surrender over the radio on Aug. 15, 1945. Auspiciously, Korea was liberated at last from Japanese colonial rule.
On that day of the historic surrender announcement by the emperor, I was 15 and attending middle school. If I had been just a few years older, I would have been drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army, fighting somewhere in the Pacific ― possibly my fateful journey of no return. I can still picture graphically the image of myself at that time, wearing a laundry-worn, faded green school uniform, a combat cap and knee-girdles like a little soldier, but looking pale and thin from malnutrition. Since the news came out of the blue, I was unsure whether I should be happy or unhappy.
Technically, I was a Japanese citizen, because my name had been changed into a Japanese one and we recited the “Oath of Imperial Subjects” in schools or offices each morning, pledging to be loyal to the emperor. Also, we had to attend a Japanese Shinto shrine every morning, rain or shine, to worship Shinto Kami (deity) and pray for divine support to win the war. Besides, teaching or publishing anything in Korean and about Korea was strictly prohibited by law.
What surprised me most of all was the realization that the emperor wasn't a living god as we had been taught at school. He was just another human being like any one of us. He was rather a fainthearted and cowardly old man when I heard his voice surrendering on the radio.
When I heard that the war was over, I was glad, above all else, that I didn't have to go to work at the military construction site near the airfield. I had to get up at five each morning to catch the smelly cargo-train that took us near the site. I took with me two rice-balls spiced only with salt for breakfast and a shovel or pick to work with. Lunch was provided there for us, but it was not rice. It was reddish grain of some sort I had never eaten before; worse still, it tasted rotten or moldy. But I was just too hungry to mind the quality of the food. I only wished they would give me enough to eat.
The good rice produced domestically was requisitioned for military provisions. Korean people received rations of barley, corn and other grains of low quality that came from countries in Southeast Asia that Japan had recently occupied. There were many people who died of hunger in those days due to the dire shortage of reserved provisions. When I visited my parents' home in Seongju during one summer vacation, their meals were watery porridge cooked with rotten corn, some potatoes and lots of vegetables. There was no rice in it.
In addition, we were forced to donate all metallic objects we had at home to replenish their serious material shortage in making ammunition. Consequently, before long, every Korean household was practically stripped of the age-old, traditional brass tableware and other metallic utensils that were put into blast furnaces to make munitions. Also, when I was in elementary school, we were often summoned to pick up scrap metal in the street or go to the mountains to collect resin from pine trees.
Apart from material contributions, Japan demanded physical labor from Koreans. It was estimated that about 2 million Koreans were engaged in forced labor in Korea, Japan and abroad between 1939 and 1945, working in subhuman conditions in mines and munitions factories. Most atrociously, they rounded up hundreds of thousands of Korean women, some as young as 13 or 14 in elementary schools, to recruit them for the “teishintai” corps for sex-slavery to heighten the fighting spirit for their savage, unwarrantable war ― a war that was of no significance whatsoever for Korea or the Korean people.
The author (
yiwoowon1988@gmail.com) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province.