Published on July 21, 2019.
Based on Masayuki Takayama’s column “Henken Jizai,” this article examines the immediate postwar League of Koreans in Japan, Kim Chon-hae, GHQ, free railway passes, Hosei University, the Burma–Thailand Railway, POW camps, Korean guards, and BC-class war criminals, discussing the complex historical issues Japan faced after the war.

July 21, 2019.
As proof that extraterritoriality existed, Kim Chon-hae issued free railway passes for the National Railways, enabling Koreans in Japan to ride for free.
The following is a chapter I published on this day last year.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column published in Shukan Shincho, which went on sale yesterday.
It is a splendid essay that fully shows that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
The title of his serialized column is “Henken Jizai.”
The Tragedy of B.
Not long after Japan lost the war, Kim Chon-hae established the League of Koreans in Japan and declared, “We will make Japan a comfortable place for us Allied nationals to live in.”
GHQ said, “Koreans are third-country nationals,” but Kim Chon-hae insisted, “At the very least, we must have extraterritoriality.”
The Kanagawa Tax Office exposed an illicit liquor factory run by Koreans in Japan.
That night, the person responsible for the exposure was attacked and killed.
It was to show that Koreans in Japan possessed extraterritoriality.
As proof that extraterritoriality existed, Kim Chon-hae issued free railway passes for the National Railways, enabling Koreans in Japan to ride for free.
A Korean in Japan who could not board because the train was full tried to break a train window and get on, and was warned by a Japanese man.
They became angry, dragged the man out onto the platform, and beat him to death with a shovel.
They had no self-control.
The League also created a “Society for the Encouragement of Study.”
If one registered there, one could freely enter Hosei, Chuo, or Meiji University.
Among them, Hosei was especially popular.
Was it because of such old ties?
The other day, the Asahi Shimbun reported on its front page that Hosei students had made a documentary about the life of a 92-year-old Korean man named Lee, who had been sentenced to death as a BC-class war criminal.
Lee, who complains of injustice, was recruited at the age of seventeen as a civilian employee attached to the military.
His job was as a guard at the Hintok prisoner-of-war camp on the Burma–Thailand Railway.
In the early stage of the previous war, Japan won overwhelming victories.
Roosevelt had provoked Japan and drawn it into the war, yet he had underestimated Japan’s real power.
He believed that Japan had no decent aircraft and that its pilots were nearsighted and could not even dive.
In the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor, even white men could not carry out torpedo attacks.
Even if he allowed the Japanese military to launch a surprise attack, he was worried whether the damage he wanted would actually occur.
Instead, battleships and cruisers alike were sunk, and the number of deaths reached ten times what had been expected.
Hamilton Fish’s “Roosevelt’s Responsibility for the War” describes the figure of a president thrown into panic by remorse that his own deception had caused so many American citizens to die.
That was the situation at Pearl Harbor.
The British battleship Prince of Wales, which came to strike Japan, was immediately sunk, and Singapore, Manila, and Bandung fell one after another in less than half a year.
In land battles, once their Indian soldiers used as pawns were defeated, white officers and soldiers immediately raised their hands.
Two hundred and sixty thousand became prisoners, a number greater than the total number of Japanese troops sent to the southern regions.
In Japanese prisons, one prison officer is assigned for every five prisoners.
If that standard were followed, three divisions’ worth of soldiers would have been needed for such cowardly prisoners.
Since it would have been impossible to wage war that way, Korean guards came into play.
That was unexpected even for the white officers and soldiers who had raised their hands.
Japan treated prisoners of war with care.
In the Russo-Japanese War, Russian soldiers surrendered while shouting “Matsuyama.”
The German officers and soldiers who surrendered at the capture of Qingdao were able to perform Beethoven’s Ninth at the Bando Prisoner-of-War Camp.
That was replaced by Korean guards.
As the conduct of Koreans in Japan after the war suggests, their treatment was extremely bad.
In H. Nelson’s “Days in a Japanese Prisoner-of-War Camp,” it is written, “The Koreans were brutal.
We called him Mephistopheles.”
The man named Lee, toward whom the Hosei University students expressed sympathy, managed 500 prisoners together with six of his companions.
It is said that he slapped them as a matter of routine.
The nickname given to him was “Lizard.”
Then came the end of the war.
Lee was charged with prisoner abuse.
Although he was once released, he was arrested again in Hong Kong while on his way home, and was sentenced to death as a C-class war criminal.
However, the sentence was never carried out, and he was released in the eleventh year after the war.
His claim that he should be paid a pension because he had been mobilized as a civilian employee attached to the military was rejected.
In the end, 148 Korean guards were indicted, and 23 were executed.
For rear-area duty, not even on the battlefield, this was an extraordinarily large number.
In connection with this prisoner abuse, two Japanese officers, including Colonel Nakamura Shizuo, the camp commandant, were executed as B-class war criminals.
According to the international law scholar Kazumata Masao, there is a distinction between B-class and C-class war crimes: those who directly abused prisoners are C-class war criminals.
The superior officers who supervised those C-class war criminals become B-class war criminals.
War, after all, should have been fought only by Japanese.