Based on an essay by Abe Nangyū first introduced on October 7, 2015, this article examines the sharp rise in crimes by Korean residents immediately after Japan’s defeat, the responses of GHQ and U.S. military government authorities, the surge in illegal entry, and the reality that postwar Japanese society was scarcely informed of these facts.

What has postwar Japan not been told?
Korean resident crime, GHQ rule, and the postwar history that the Asahi has hidden.
March 24, 2026.
Official hashtag ranking: Hospital Life, No. 29.
This is an essay based on Abe Nangyū’s article, which I first introduced on October 7, 2015, discussing the sharp increase in crimes by Korean residents immediately after Japan’s defeat, the responses of GHQ and the U.S. military government authorities, the surge in illegal entrants, and the reality that postwar Japanese society was told almost nothing about these facts.
Through the Naoetsu Station incident, disturbances in various places, clashes with the police over black-market rice, GHQ memoranda, the reality of repatriation and re-entry, and crime statistics for the first ten years after the war, it concretely depicts what occurred in Japan during the occupation period.
The author sharply criticizes the fact that, because of the false moralism created by the Asahi Shimbun and the Mainichi Shimbun, the Japanese people remained ignorant even of their own postwar history and continued to be manipulated by the “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies” of China and the Korean Peninsula.
April 21, 2019.
The American historian Edward W. Wagner wrote:
“From the standpoint of the cultural tradition of the Koreans, the individual’s relation to the law was subjective, and this had been instilled in the Korean mind.”
The following is a continuation of Abe Nangyū’s painstaking work, which I first introduced on October 7, 2015.
*Except for the title, the emphasis in black is mine.
Characteristics of Korean resident crime in the postwar period.
Immediately after Japan’s defeat, crimes by Koreans increased.
This was something unimaginable before the defeat of the Empire.
The reorganization of the police system and the ambiguity of criminal jurisdiction over Koreans had an effect.
August 1945: 5 cases; September: 19 cases; October: 26 cases; November: 36 cases; December: 42 cases.
There were many cases of group violence, collective struggles, and disturbing behavior, and there were eight robbery cases committed by groups.
As for murder, there was an incident on December 29, at the end of the year, on the platform of Naoetsu Station, a key point on the Shin’etsu Line, where a Japanese youth was killed in full view of the public by a group of three Koreans.
The three Koreans each had about 30 kilograms of black-market rice and were trying to board a train by smashing its window glass.
When the Japanese youth rebuked them, they killed him with pipes and shovels, saying, “How dare you talk so insolently to Koreans.”
Afterward, the local police arrested the three Koreans and sent them to the prosecutor’s office as offenders caught in the act of murder, but the U.S. military government authorities stationed in Echigo-Takada took custody of them and released them.
This act by the U.S. military government authorities was seen as based on the perception that the occupying U.S. forces had liberated the Koreans.
It was also an act showing the liberation of Koreans by elevating their status above that of the Japanese, who had attacked Pearl Harbor.
In February 1946, GHQ issued a memorandum stating that “judgments handed down by Japanese criminal courts against Koreans who had provided appropriate evidence of their intention to return to Korea shall be reviewed by GHQ, which shall take appropriate measures” (The Korean Minority in Japan).
The response of the U.S. military government authorities in Echigo-Takada to the murderers anticipated this GHQ memorandum.
Once it became clear that they were workers conscripted during the war, they were released without charge.
*What one learns by reading Abe Nangyū’s painstaking work is this:
We know almost nothing about postwar Japan.
We subscribed to the Asahi and the Mainichi.
We became superficial moralists.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that postwar Japanese people thought they knew everything about the world.
But the foolishness, or perhaps stupidity, of not even knowing anything about the postwar history of our own country.
We truly were fools.
That is why we were trampled by “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
That is why we continued to be trapped by China and the Korean Peninsula.
In my own case, I was defrauded of a large sum of money, and my anger and bitter regret became killer stress, causing me to suffer a serious illness in which I was told that my chance of survival was 25 percent, and I spent seven months in hospital.
Japan was not only stripped of an astronomical amount of Japanese taxpayers’ money exceeding 100 trillion yen.
It also helped the arrogance and ambition for world domination of countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
Through the fabricated reports on such matters as the Nanjing Massacre and the so-called comfort women, which the Asahi Shimbun gleefully reported to the world.
The honor and credibility of our ancestors and ourselves.
Through the propaganda activities of those who took advantage of the Asahi’s reporting.
Have continued to be damaged in international society.
We, who truly were fools.
Have still not forced the Asahi Shimbun to issue an official correction to international society.
On the contrary, through the advocacy of constitutional protection and opposition to constitutional revision led by this very Asahi.
Which it is no exaggeration to call discourse exactly in line with their operations.
Through the greatest folly of the postwar period.
Japan has no army or right of belligerency to defend itself.
Nor does it have the right of preemptive strike to prevent attacks on the country in response to clear enemy attack intentions or activities.
It is virtually unarmed.
While facing the military expansion of enemy states, China and the Korean Peninsula.
Japan’s chance of survival through its own power is not merely 25 percent.
In the present state, it would be no exaggeration to say that it is practically zero.
Those who are trying to reduce our chance of survival to zero.
Are the countries of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
And yet, even now, the information-poor people who subscribe to or watch only the Asahi and NHK.
Together with the Asahi and opposition politicians who, it is no exaggeration to say, are a group of treasonous lawmakers.
Continue to chant hypocritical peace.
Needless to say, those watching this with a smirk are China and the Korean Peninsula.
*
Immediately after the defeat, there was a food shortage.
The reason GHQ made the repatriates from Manchuria wait for one year was the food shortage in Japan.
During this period, Koreans carried black-market rice from Hokuriku to Kyoto, and on January 24, 1946, in Kyoto, Koreans caused a disturbance by attacking Shichijō Police Station over an investigation into black-market rice; this had as its background the occupying U.S. forces’ treatment of Koreans.
Over crackdowns on black-market rice, Koreans repeatedly had conflicts with the Japanese police.
The attack on the Toyama Station police box in August of the same year was also an incident in which Koreans reacted against the crackdown on black-market rice.
Because in the Naoetsu Station incident the U.S. military government authorities released them without even putting them on trial, Koreans understood this as meaning that they had been recognized as one rank above the Japanese.
It is said that crime is born of poverty and ignorance, but in this period the actions of the U.S. military government authorities and GHQ made Korean residents in Japan indifferent to Japanese law.
The American historian Edward W. Wagner argued that “from the standpoint of the cultural tradition of the Koreans, the individual’s relation to the law was subjective, and this had been instilled in the Korean mind” (the aforementioned The Korean Minority in Japan), and that this caused frequent crimes by Korean residents in Japan.
In addition, the National Police Agency’s Crime Statistics Report states that the large number of illegal entrants was also a cause of frequent crime.
Illegal entry is a phenomenon seen everywhere in the world, and for that reason there exists a system of “special permission for residence.”
However, in the case of postwar Japan, the problem of illegal entry, in terms of its volume and the large number of people involved, was an extremely serious matter under the circumstances in which Japan was still in the process of national reconstruction after defeat, and it could not be compared with that of the United States or other countries.
Judging that the increase in illegal entrants from the Korean Peninsula would harm Japan’s economic reconstruction, GHQ prohibited entry by persons without the permission of the Supreme Commander in March 1946 and began crackdowns the following April.
Looking at the number of illegal entrants after the crackdowns began, according to police arrest records, the total from 1946 to 1953 was 60,963.
Of these, the number in 1946 was abnormally high at 21,400.
At GHQ’s request, Korean residents in Japan repatriated to the Korean Peninsula.
Of course, they themselves also wished to return, and the Japanese government systematically repatriated them by the end of 1946.
However, once they had returned home, many Koreans, because of the political, economic, and social instability in Korea, remembered the lives they had had while living in Japan, and the number of those re-entering Japan sharply increased.
Moreover, this figure represents only those who were caught, and in reality several times that number of Koreans illegally entered Japan.
The reason they returned to Japan by illegal entry was that in March 1946 GHQ issued a memorandum stating that “non-Japanese who had been repatriated to their home countries may not return to Japan until commercial traffic becomes possible unless they have the permission of the Supreme Commander.”
The number of people who returned from Japan between August 1945 and the issuance of the memorandum was 940,438.
Of these, the number who returned voluntarily is estimated to have been about 500,000.
After this memorandum was issued, crackdowns on illegal entry were strengthened, while GHQ ordered the Japanese government to continue systematic repatriation until the end of 1946.
As a result, by the end of 1946, approximately 1,523,338 people had returned home.
The number of Koreans in Japan, which had been 799,878 in 1938, had reached 1,241,315 in 1940, just before the outbreak of the Greater East Asia War.
Then, immediately before the defeat of the Empire, at the end of 1944, it reached 1,936,843.
This statistic is the basis for the figure of approximately two million Koreans in Japan.
In 1945, the year of defeat, interference by U.S. submarines made it difficult to cross the Genkai Sea.
Subtracting the number of people who repatriated from August 1945 to the end of 1946 from this figure of just over 1.936 million gives 413,505.
On the other hand, according to the national census of October 1947, the number of Koreans in Japan was 508,905.
The difference of approximately 100,000 is estimated to have been illegal entrants, and the number of registered persons in March 1950, immediately before the outbreak of the Korean War, had further increased to 535,236.
At the time, there were means by which illegal entrants could register.
Registration became stricter after Japan regained independence in 1952.
The “crimes” of Koreans during the first ten years after the war.
It was the National Police Agency that pointed out that male Korean illegal entrants committed many crimes.
One no longer sees such records today, but during the ten years after defeat, the number of crimes committed by foreigners within this archipelago, excluding Okinawa Prefecture, was recorded.
According to the Crime Statistics Report and other materials of the Criminal Affairs Bureau of the National Police Agency, more than 20,000 Korean residents in Japan were arrested every year, and the highest number was in 1950, when the Korean War broke out, with 29,440.
The number of prisoners was 6,026.
Incidentally, the number of Chinese offenders that year was 370.
Looking at this as the offender rate per 1,000 residents, Koreans were 4.55 and Chinese were 0.8.
In the case of Japanese people, devastated by defeat, the figure was 0.59, which shows how numerous the crimes committed by Koreans were.
Regarding this abnormally high crime rate, the National Police Agency pointed out that, when looking at the offender rate among Koreans, the basic population was the number registered under the Alien Registration Law, and therefore the rate became high.
In the case of Korean residents in Japan, the reason given was that many crimes were committed by unregistered persons who had not registered as foreigners.
Unregistered persons referred to illegal entrants.
This article continues.