Published on April 21, 2019.
Based on a study by Abe Nangyū originally presented on October 7, 2015, this essay examines the sharp rise in crimes by resident Koreans immediately after Japan’s defeat, the response of GHQ and the U.S. military government, the surge in illegal re-entry from the Korean Peninsula, and the reality that postwar Japanese society was scarcely informed of any of it.
Through such cases as the Naoetsu Station murder, riots and clashes over black-market rice, GHQ memoranda, the cycle of repatriation and illegal return, and crime statistics from the first ten postwar years, the essay depicts in concrete terms what was happening in Occupied Japan.
The author sharply criticizes the false moralism fostered by newspapers such as Asahi and Mainichi, arguing that Japanese people were left ignorant even of their own postwar history and were consequently manipulated by the “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” of China and the Korean Peninsula.

2019-04-21
The American historian Edward W. Wagner wrote,
“From the standpoint of Korean cultural tradition, the individual’s relation to law was subjective, and this had been hammered into the Korean mind.”

The following is a continuation of the substantial work by Abe Nangyū that I posted on October 7, 2015.
The bold emphasis other than the title is mine.
Characteristics of crimes by resident Koreans in the postwar period.
Immediately after the defeat, crimes by Koreans increased.
That was something unimaginable before the imperial defeat.
The reorganization of the police system was affected by the ambiguity surrounding criminal jurisdiction over Koreans.
August 1945 = 5 cases, September = 19 cases, October = 26 cases, November = 36 cases, December = 42 cases.
There were many group assaults, group clashes, and disturbing acts, and there were eight cases of robbery committed by groups.
As for murder, there is the case on December 29 at the end of the year, at Naoetsu Station, a key station on the Shin’etsu Line, where a young Japanese man was killed in full view of the public by a trio of Koreans on the platform.
The three Koreans were carrying about thirty kilograms each of black-market rice and tried to board the train by smashing the window glass.
When a Japanese youth reproached them for this, saying, “How dare you be insolent toward Koreans,” they killed him with pipes and shovels.
Afterward, the local police arrested the three Koreans and sent them to the prosecutor’s office as flagrante delicto murder suspects, but the U.S. military government stationed in Echigo-Takada took custody of them and let them go.
This action by the U.S. military government was regarded as something based on the idea that the occupying U.S. forces had “liberated” the Koreans.
It was also an act of showing Korean liberation by raising the status of Koreans above that of the Japanese, who had attacked Pearl Harbor.
In February 1946, GHQ issued a memorandum stating that “with respect to Koreans who provide appropriate evidence of an intention to return to Korea, judgments handed down by Japanese criminal courts shall be reviewed by GHQ, which shall take appropriate measures” (The Korean Minority in Japan).
The treatment of the murderers by the U.S. military government in Echigo-Takada was a forerunner of this GHQ memorandum.
As soon as it became clear that they were laborers conscripted during the war, they were released without charge.
What one learns by reading the substantial work of Mr. Abe Nangyū is this…
that we know almost nothing about postwar Japan.
To say that postwar Japanese believed, by subscribing to Asahi and Mainichi…
and becoming sham moralists…
that they knew everything about the world, would not be too much of an exaggeration.
But the degree of foolishness in not even knowing anything about our own country’s postwar history…
we really were idiots.
That is why we were trampled by “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies”…
and were continually trapped by China and the Korean Peninsula.
In my own case, I was defrauded of a large sum of money, and that anger and bitterness became killer stress, leading to a grave illness for which I was told my chance of survival was 25%, and I spent seven months in the hospital.
Japan has not only had astronomical sums of taxpayer money, exceeding one hundred trillion yen, stripped away from it…
it has also helped foster the arrogance and the ambition for world domination of countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
Through the fabricated reporting on the Nanjing Massacre and the military comfort women, which the Asahi Shimbun gleefully broadcast to the world…
the honor and credibility of our ancestors and ourselves…
have continued to be damaged in the international community…
through the propaganda activities of those who rode on the back of Asahi’s reporting.
We, who were truly fools…
still have not made the Asahi Shimbun issue a formal correction to the international community.
On the contrary, through Asahi-led arguments such as constitutional preservation and opposition to constitutional revision…
arguments that it would be no exaggeration to call exactly the line of their subversive operations…
through the very height of postwar stupidity…
we remain in a state virtually equivalent to being unarmed…
without an army or belligerent rights to defend our own country…
or the right of preemptive attack to prevent attacks on our own country in the face of clear hostile intent and hostile activity…
while watching the military expansion of hostile states, China and the Korean Peninsula, right before our eyes…
so that the probability of Japan surviving by its own power is not 25% at all…
but, under present conditions, it would be no exaggeration to say it is effectively zero.
Even though it is the countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” that are trying to reduce our survival probability to zero…
there are still information-weak people who subscribe only to Asahi and watch only NHK…
and together with Asahi and the opposition politicians who can fairly be called a group of traitorous lawmakers…
they continue to preach a false peace.
Needless to say, it is China and the Korean Peninsula that look on at this with satisfaction.
*
Immediately after the defeat, there was a food shortage.
The reason GHQ made the repatriates from Manchuria wait a full year was because Japan’s food crisis was in the background.
In this period, Koreans were transporting black-market rice from Hokuriku to Kyoto, and on January 24, 1946, in Kyoto, Koreans caused a riot by attacking Shichijō Police Station over a black-market rice investigation, and this too was against the background of the occupying U.S. forces’ treatment of Koreans.
In crackdowns on black-market rice, Koreans repeatedly clashed with the Japanese police.
The attack on the Toyama Station front police box in August of that same year was also an incident in which Koreans reacted against black-market rice enforcement.
Because, in the Naoetsu Station case, the U.S. military government had acquitted them without even putting them on trial, Koreans took it that they were recognized as beings one rank above Japanese.
Crime is said to arise from poverty and ignorance, but in this period the actions of the U.S. military government and GHQ made resident Koreans indifferent to Japanese law.
The American historian Edward W. Wagner argues that the reason crimes by resident Koreans became so frequent was that “from the standpoint of Korean cultural tradition, the individual’s relation to law was subjective, and this had been hammered into the Korean mind” (the above-cited The Korean Minority in Japan).
In addition, the National Police Agency’s Crime Statistics states that the large number of illegal entrants was also a cause of the high incidence of crime.
Illegal entry is a phenomenon seen everywhere in the world, and for that reason there exists the system of “special permission for residence.”
However, in postwar Japan, the issue of illegal entry, in terms of its scale, the number of people involved, and the fact that the country was in the midst of rebuilding after defeat, was a matter incomparably more serious than in the United States or elsewhere.
Judging that the increase in illegal entrants from the Korean Peninsula would hinder Japan’s economic reconstruction, GHQ in March 1946 prohibited entry by anyone without the permission of the Supreme Commander, and began crackdowns from the following April.
If one looks at the number of illegal entrants after the start of the crackdown through police arrest records, the total from 1946 to 1953 was 60,963.
Of these, 1946 alone was extraordinarily high, at 21,400.
At GHQ’s request, resident Koreans were repatriated to the Korean Peninsula.
Naturally there was also a desire among them to return home, and the Japanese government carried out planned repatriation by the end of 1946.
However, once they had returned home, many Koreans, because of South Korea’s political, economic, and social instability, remembered the lives they had lived while residing in Japan, and the number seeking to re-enter Japan surged.
Moreover, these figures are only the number apprehended; in reality, several times this number of Koreans entered Japan illegally.
The reason they returned to Japan by illegal entry was that in March 1946 GHQ issued a memorandum stating that “non-Japanese who have repatriated to their home country may not return to Japan until such time as commercial traffic is possible, unless permitted by the Supreme Commander.”
The number of returnees from Japan from August 1945 until this memorandum was issued totaled 940,438.
Of these, the number estimated to have returned voluntarily was about 500,000.
After the issuance of this memorandum, while the crackdown on illegal entry was strengthened, GHQ also ordered the Japanese government to continue planned repatriation until the end of 1946.
As a result, by the end of 1946 approximately 1,523,338 people had returned.
The number of resident Koreans in Japan, which was 799,878 in 1938, had reached 1,241,315 by 1940, just before the outbreak of the Greater East Asia War.
And by the end of 1944, just before the imperial defeat, it had reached 1,936,843.
These statistics are the basis for the figure of about two million resident Koreans in Japan.
In the year of defeat, 1945, because of interference by U.S. submarines, it had become difficult to cross the Genkai Sea to come to Japan.
If one subtracts from these more than 1,936,000 people the number repatriated from August 1945 to the end of 1946, the result is 413,505.
On the other hand, in the national census of October 1947, the number of resident Koreans in Japan was 508,905.
The difference, about 100,000, is estimated to have been illegal entrants, and by March 1950, just before the outbreak of the Korean War, the number of registered persons had risen further to 535,236.
At that time, means existed for illegal entrants to be registered.
Registration became stricter only after Japan regained independence in 1952.
“Crimes” by Koreans in the ten postwar years.
It was the National Police Agency that pointed out that male Korean illegal entrants committed many crimes.
One does not see it today, but in the ten years after the defeat, the number of crimes committed by foreigners in these islands, excluding Okinawa, was recorded.
According to the Criminal Affairs Bureau of the National Police Agency’s Crime Statistics, more than 20,000 resident Koreans were apprehended every year, with the peak coming in 1950, the year the Korean War broke out, at 29,440.
The number of prisoners was 6,026.
For reference, the number of Chinese offenders that year was 370.
If one looks at the offender rate per 1,000 resident population, Koreans were at 4.55 and Chinese at 0.8.
Since the figure for Japanese, impoverished by defeat, was 0.59, one can see just how many crimes were committed by Koreans.
Regarding this abnormally high crime rate, the National Police Agency pointed out that in looking at the Korean offender rate, the base population was the number registered under the Alien Registration Law, which made the rate appear high.
In the case of resident Koreans, the reason given was that many crimes were committed by unregistered persons who had not filed alien registration.
And by unregistered persons, what was meant were illegal entrants.
To be continued.