Sandra Wilson

As colonial Japanese subjects, about 240,000 Korean men took part on the Japanese side during the Second World War. Of that number, 3,016 had been recruited to work as civilian guards in prisoner-of-war and internment camps outside the Japanese home islands. The Allied war crimes trials of 1945–1951 specifically targeted camp personnel, and the great majority of the Koreans convicted as ‘Japanese’ war criminals were former guards. The standard scholarly view in recent years has been that Korean Guards and other junior military personnel suffered disproportionately heavy retribution in the war crimes trials. Examination of the documentary evidence on the apprehension, investigation, prosecution, sentencing and release of suspected and convicted war criminals, however, shows conclusively that claims that Koreans were over-represented among war criminals, or that they suffered the heaviest penalties, are wrong. The records relating to Koreans indicate that prosecution, and subsequent deliberations over sentencing and clemency, took strong account of the implications of having a subordinate place in the Japanese military. Far from being the group upon whom the greatest punishment was visited, Koreans were singled out only when their distinctive individual initiative as brutal guards drew attention to them.

Before 1945, Japan built a colonial empire with large non-Japanese populations. It annexed Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1910), established a client state in Manchuria (1932) and occupied parts of northern China (from 1933). Japan’s expansion drew on its initial success in persuading other Asians that would defend Asia against Western imperialism. War with China in 1937 led, in December 1941, to war against the West. Japan then occupied much of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific, but could not stop the Allied counter-offensive and had to surrender in September 1945. New scholarship has emphasized both the complexity of Japan’s imperial rule and the engagement of Asian people in the imperial venture. Scholars have paid close attention to consequences of imperialism for domestic Japanese society and have shown a growing recognition that Japan’s colonial rule should be treated as part of mainstream Japanese history.