朝鮮總督府官吏

最後の証言

The last word:

Interviews witha former civil servant at theGovernment-General of Korea
Chosen Sotokufu kanri—saigo no shogen
By Nishikawa Kiyoshi
Edited by Editorial Dept of Sakura-no-hana Shuppan
Published by Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha
Table of Contents
About the Inter views
Chapter 1 A Civil Ser vant in the Government-General of Korea

1

Entering Service in the Government-General of Korea

1

Impressions of Korea

3

Hwajeonmin: Poor Slash-and-Burn Farmers

5

Graduation from the First Class of theGovernment-General of Korea Civil Servant Training Center

7

1938: Temporary Call-Up into Military Service

8

Promoted Two Ranks in One Day

10Work at Mount Kumgang

10

The Governor-General of Korea Attends the Ceremony for Starting the Foundation

12

A Scramble to Procure Parts in Keijō

13

1943: Promotion to Director of Internal Affairs for Yeongwol County

14

The Tough Job of a Civil Servant

14

1944: Promotion to the Director of Internal Affairs for Wonju County

15

1945: Promotion to Acting Director of the Mining Section in the
Mining Division of the Kangwon Provincial Office15

Chapter 2 Korean Colleagues

19

Civil Servants in the Government-General

19

Living Conditions; the Korean Language

19

Friendly Relations between Japanese and Koreans

20

Mixed Teams of Koreans and Japanese Were the Best

20

Relations with Koreans21

“Japan and Korea as One Body” (Naisen Ittai) and Discrimination

23

Marriages between Japanese and Koreans

23

A Memorable Korean Woman

23

Difficult Experiences with Koreans24

The Yangban and Classes

25

Korean Customs

25

Enkorin Forests (Woodlands Sold Off to People with Connections to the Land)25

I Want People Today to Know How Things Actually Were

28

Chapter 3 Organizational Over viewof the Government-General of Korea
Organizational Overview of the Government-General34

The Government-General and Military Headquarters

34

Differences between the Police and Military Police

35

Viewpoint as a Director of Internal Affairs

35

Labor Conscription (Chōyō)

36

Seeking Understanding through Explanation

36

The Reality of Japanese-Style Name Creation and Adoption (Sōshi Kaimei)

38

The “Comfort Women” (Jūgun Ianfu)

40

Traffickers (Zegen)40

Declaration as a Director of Internal Affairs

41

The Final Witness

42

Korean Volunteer Soldiers

42

I Did Not Witness Korean Conscripts Being Sent Off

42

Policies for Making People Imperial Subjects (Kōminka Seisaku)

43

Disgust for Japanese Who Discriminate Against Koreans

43

Korea and the Course of the War

44

Making My Mother Worry

45

Divine Intercession

45

Chapter 4 Korea at the End of the Second World War

50

Japan’s Defeat		

51

The “Jewel Voice” Broadcast

51

Scattered Rioting

52

An Overnight Reversal in Positions

52

Japanese Pride on the Line53

Concerns about Japan’s Future at the Time of Repatriation

54

The “Senzaki Bureau of Repatriate Welfare” at the Port of Senzaki, Yamaguchi Prefecture

55

The Chinese		

56

A Fine School Principal

57

Chapter 5 Japanese Governance and the Future ofJapanese-Korean Relations

ii

31

62

Japan Exercised Commendable Governance

62

Infrastructure Development

63

The Absence of Aerial Bombing in Korea

63

Japan Is Not an Independent Country64

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Discrimination was Inexcusable

65

Sadaejuui: “Love and Admiration for the Great and Powerful”

66

Friendship between Japan and South Korea: A Second Home

66

Letter to Prime Minister Abe

68

Editorial Supplement: A Histor y of Korea and the Government-General of Korea

71

Photos		

71

Residents-General and Governors-General of Korea

76

A Brief History of Modern Japan and Korea

82

Selected References88• Column 1

Distinguishing between Japan’s Annexation of Korea and Colonialism

17• Column 2

Education and sōshi-kaimei: “Establishing a Family Name and Changing
One’s Name”

29• Column 3

The Fiction of the “Comfort Women”

48• Column 4

Korean Volunteer Soldiers59• Column 5

Medical Care; Resources and Agriculture60• Column 6Japan’s Annexation of Korea; the Korean Imperial Family (The Yi Dynasty)

69• Column 7

Aid from Japan to Korea

70* Editor’s Note: Since the content of this book is essentially a transcript of Mr. Nishikawa relating his
own experiences, we have intentionally used the first-person pronoun “I ” throughout the entire text.

iii

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

About the Inter views
Over a period of several days in March 2014, we conducted more than twenty hours of interviews
with Mr. Nishikawa Kiyoshi,1 who between 1933 and 1945 was stationed with the Government-Generalof Korea as a civil servant (kanri) in Korea’s Kangwon Province. Later, we asked Mr. Nishikawa
to annotate the resulting manuscript and indicate corrections as necessary to prepare the draft for
publication.
As a former civil servant with the Government-General of Korea, Mr. Nishikawa may well be thelast surviving witness who is able to describe Japan’s annexation of Korea from the standpoint of theauthorities who administered Korea.
Even if there are others who lived in Korea at the time, most of them will be those who were youngat the time of the end of the Second World War, or those who have heard stories related by family
members familiar with details of the time. While such accounts are also valuable forms of experience,
it would be difficult for such people to speak from the perspective of a person aware of the nature of
the Government-General’s administrative policies. This is precisely why Mr. Nishikawa’s testimony
as a former civil servant, as well as his own photographs and materials, represent such an invaluable
record for understanding the actual state of affairs during Japan’s annexation of Korea.
The content of the testimony given here will most likely come as a surprise to those who received
their education after World War II.
In the interviews, Mr. Nishikawa touches on the extremely peaceful character of everyday life in
Korea, and talks about happy Korean and Japanese citizens. In particular, he repeatedly mentions
that the civil service in Korea was staffed mainly by Korean civil servants, which made things suchas the forced mobilization (i.e., abduction) of women by state officials or the military for service as
prostitutes inconceivable and impossible.
Moreover, from Nishikawa’s valuable photos, we can see that Koreans and Japanese were normallyon excellent terms. It was also common for Koreans to be appointed to senior positions over Japanese
subordinates, and Nishikawa recalls many fond memories of organizing mixed Japanese and Korean
baseball teams with his colleagues from work to compete against others, as well as occasionallyenjoying cups of sake under the cherry blossoms. He notes that Japanese and Koreans alike dedicatedthemselves to their duties, hoping for Korea’s further development. While such a description mightseem surprisingly indistinguishable from how things are like in modern society, historical truths are
precisely like this.
On the other hand, there are claims by experts and Korean commentators that Koreans sufferedunjust repression by the Japanese military during the earlier period of colonial rule, whereas good
governance characterized the middle and later years of Japanese administration. However, this was
the result of terrorist acts instigated by resistance factions during the consolidation of Japanese rule,and it is an unfortunate reality that cracking down on such things will sometimes result in brutal
consequences. One cannot deny the annexation as a whole by citing such examples. It is also truethat such tragedies would never have occurred if the resistance did not act as it did. To speak plainly,
this was an outcome chosen by the instigators themselves.
It is the nature of history that a hard-line approach is taken to rebels when territories are being
1

In this book, the names of Japanese people are given with the family name first, followed by the given name. In thisexample, “Nishikawa” is the surname and “Kiyoshi” is the given name.

iv

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

combined, and the resistance fighters are also heroes to their people. This duality is something that
we who live later simply have to accept.
Moreover, we also need to understand Nishikawa’s testimony against the background of what was
taking place at the time around the world. The year 1930 was when the Salt March led by the Indian
activist Mohandas K. Gandhi to protest the British colonial government’s monopoly over salt took
place. In China, 1927 was the year in which Communist party leaders Chen Duxiu and Mao Zedong
began organizing the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army (i.e., the Chinese Red Army), which
subsequently carried out terrorist attacks in revolt against the nationalist Kuomintang government. In
the Soviet Union, the government of Joseph Stalin carried out continuous purges from 1922 onwards.
It is said that the purges resulted in the deaths of upwards of thirty million people. The 20th century
also bore witness to the rise of Communism in the Far East and the oppression of colonized ethnic
groups by their rulers. In the USA, Black people were subject to wide-ranging discrimination, andlynchings were commonplace. Asians were also victims of discrimination. Furthermore, the world
would be thrown into chaos with the Great Depression of 1929.
US President Theodore Roosevelt, who brokered negotiations ending the Russo-Japanese War
in 1905 while simultaneously recognizing that Manchuria should be placed under Japanese rule,also won a commitment from Prime Minister Katsura Tarō that the US should gain an interest in theSouth Manchuria Railway. Afterwards, this commitment was annulled through the fierce oppositionof Foreign Minister Komura Jutarō, and the resentment resulting from this period eventually led
to the Hull note being presented to Japan by Theodore’s younger cousin, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt, in 1941. As a result, Japan was driven to attack Pearl Harbor. Mr. Nishikawa’s duties with
the Government-General of Korea took place in this era when countries around the world were busy
engaging in diplomacy.
Colonial rule—of the Philippines by the USA, of Indonesia by the Netherlands, of India, Ceylon,
Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong by the UK, and of Indochina by the French—had lasted
in some cases for centuries.
When reading through this book, it is necessary to understand what was taking place in Korea in
the global context of this historical background.
Moreover, during the turmoil of the Greater East Asian War, Korea was also spared the violence of
air raids, and on the whole was more peaceful than the Japanese mainland. The Government-Generalof Korea worked with the ultimate objective of realizing “Japan and Korea as One Body” (naisen
ittai) as it carried out infrastructural enhancement, economic development, and the popularization of
education. Koreans submitted notifications to create family names or change their names to reflect
Japanese practices (sōshi-kaimei) and were also subject to labor conscription, just like the Japanese.
A recruitment drive for volunteer Korean troops resulted in as many as three hundred thousandapplications. However, Nishikawa’s testimony also tells us that individuals could decline to participate
in sōshi-kaimei and labor conscription programs.
It was thanks to Japan’s rule of Korea that such a state of affairs was allowed. Rather than being
enforced by mandates or orders from the state or the Government-General, the reality was that ruleover Korea was lenient. Nishikawa says Japan’s rule was not carried out thoroughly enough for it tobe called coercion by the state.
The Government-General of Korea, by working to give Koreans “the same rights as the Japanese”
until just before the end of the war, was making an earnest attempt to observe naisen ittai in practiceas well as in principle.
This annexation policy could be described as having been something extremely rare in the contextv

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

of global history.
On one hand, Nishikawa acknowledges that discrimination against Koreans did take place tosome degree, and that resistance by Koreans was not unknown during the thirty-six years of theannexation. In particular, the rapid social and institutional reforms undertaken by the Japanese were
naturally seen as objectionable from the perspective of Korea’s privileged classes. However, manyrecords survive showing how the lower classes (slaves) and women were treated like livestock andsuffered in abject misery during the Joseon Dynasty.
For such Korean people, the education and sanitation introduced by Japan, as well as medical care,
agriculture and industry, infrastructure developments and technological innovations such as railroads
and electricity, and the maintenance of order made it possible for people to enjoy prosperous lives.
These facts are a part of the modern history of Korea and have been conclusively accepted as facts by
European and American historians.
There were many people in Japan, South Korea, and North Korea familiar with the realities of theGovernment-General of Korea, and it would have been only natural that their records and testimonies
should paint a more diverse and multifaceted picture. However, remarks by those who knew how
things actually were have unfortunately been drowned out by the postwar distortions of reporting by
the mass media. The media and the press have repeated self-recriminations based on good intentions
and placed a lid over the historical truth, too preoccupied with their armchair theories. Now that thesewell-meaning fantasies have come to be recognized as truth by certain politicians such as Mr. Kōno
Yōhei, they have reached a point where they can no longer be overlooked. Japan’s honor is at stake.
Today, a host of falsehoods that would besmirch Japan’s dignity are being reported as a resultof the well-meaning prejudices of the mass media, without any attempt to verify the realities of theGovernment-General of Korea. In the context of this current situation, Mr. Nishikawa Kiyoshi,
incensed with righteous indignation, has written a letter directly to Prime Minister Abe Shinzō on the“Problem of the So-called Military Comfort Women” (See Chapter 5).
Issues like the problem of military comfort women were not even discussed right after the endof World War II, when memories of the period should have been fresh. This was because there
were many people in Japan and Korea who would have known the realities of the time, and who
would immediately have seen what was false about stories of things like the “forced mobilization”
of Koreans. That the problem was not brought up by either Korea’s first President Syngman Rhee,
or President Park Chung-hee when relations between Japan and South Korea were normalized,
eloquently speaks to the truth of the matter.
Furthermore, Mr. Nishikawa has left us the following words:
We Japanese feel that we should be ashamed of saying bad things about other countries. But
we also have our own objections. How did things go in your country’s colonies? How were thewomen treated? I have no desire to amass a pile of information to say, “Your country did all ofthese bad things...” I feel that it is unseemly for a Japanese to air the misdeeds of others to therest of the world.
However, with this, too, I feel that a limit has been reached. There is a limit to my patience, if the
dignity of the Japanese should be further sullied in front of the world on account of lies. Here, I
would like to offer a firm rebuttal.
I believe that if Japan and Korea are able to work together with each other, they have thepotential to achieve excellence on a global scale. This is a conviction I have based on my ownvi

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

experience of living and working alongside Koreans in the past.
I want to set these feelings down in writing, so that they may be entrusted to the next generation.
To Mr. Nishikawa Kiyoshi, a former civil servant with the Government-General of Korea who thisyear marks his one hundredth birthday, we wish to express our sincere and heartfelt gratitude forhaving been so generous with his time in obliging us for interviews and to wish him continued good
health.
July 2014, Editorial Department, Sakuranohana Shuppan Publicationsvii

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Chapter 1

A Civil Ser vant in the Government-General of Korea
Entering Service in the Government-General of Korea
As a starting point, I would like to describe the work that I did as a civil servant in Korea. Since thiswas eighty years ago, you need to understand what Korea was like in those days, as well as somehistorical background. By talking as though my readers were there at the time, so they can get areal sense of things, I’ll clarify in turn my memories of the Korean people and the organization of theGovernment-General of Korea. In Chapter 1, I would like to explain the work I did in Korea prior to
the end of the Second World War.
In March 1933, at the age of eighteen, I graduated from Wakayama Prefecture’s Kumano Forestry
School (now Wakayama Prefectural Kumano High School). At the time, I think there were only three
forestry schools in the entire country. My birth in Wakayama provided the rich soil that nourished
my aspirations toward forestry. I was also close to the Grand Shrines of Kumano Taisha and Ise Jingū,
so you might say the area traditionally had a special connection with forestry.
My father was a farmer, and since I had been helping him with work in the bush since I was little,
it was only natural that I should have gone to the forestry school. I also wanted to study further after
graduating from the ordinary elementary school (jinjō shōgakkō). In the countryside, these were
the days when it was still commonplace to find a job after graduating from elementary school. So tocontinue my studies, I chose to enroll at the forestry school, which was the option that was available
in our area. Although my father was a farmer, he owned some forest land, and was also a landlord who
employed tenant farmers.

The Career of Kiyoshi Nishikawa
1915 Born
Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture, Japan
1933 Age 18	Graduation from Kumano Forestry School; enters the colonial civil service in the Department
of Industry for Kangwon Province, Korea
1936 Age 21
Enrollment at the First Government-General of Korea Local Civil Servant Training Institute1937 Age 22
Appointment to Kangwon Province by the Government-General of Korea
1938 Age 23
Temporarily called up for a year of military service in the 76th Infantry Regiment (Ranam)1943 Age 28
Promotion to the Director of Internal Affairs for Yeongwol County, Kangwon Province
1944 Age 29
Promotion to Director of Internal Affairs for Wonju County, Kangwon Province
1945 Age 30	Promotion to Acting Director of the Mining Section in the Mining Division of the Kangwon
Provincial Office
1945 Age 30
End of the Second World War; posting to the Senzaki Regional Repatriation Center
1946 Age 31
Transferred to the Wakayama Prefectural Office2014 Age 99
Present day

Not long after I had graduated, while I was planting trees with my father in the hills behind ourhouse, a telegram arrived from the school principal informing us that a job had been found for me in
Korea. It was the principal who had been seeking a job for me, and I didn’t know where I would be

1

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

posted until the telegram arrived. While searching for forest-related postings, I think he came acrossa job in Korea. That principal was a wonderful man, and I was obliged to him for connecting me withother jobs even after the war.
For my own part, it was not really a shock to hear that I would be going to Korea for the posting.
At the time, although we distinguished between “the interior” (“naichi”, i.e., Japan) and the “overseas
territories” (“gaichi”, i.e., Korea and Taiwan), it was still all Japan to us, and I had the sense that I
would be going to some distant “Korean” part of Japan.
My only qualm, hearing that I would be going to Korea, was the thought that “I’m going to be introuble if Mother starts crying” at the prospect of my moving away from our hometown, but since mymother didn’t shed any tears at the time, it made things easier for me. However, I found out later thatmy mother had apparently been quite worried and was waiting to hear from me that I safely arrived in
Korea. I learned that she had stayed awake at night, sleepless with worry.
It was a long haul to Korea—harder, I’m sure, than it is for people these days to get to Europe.
It took four or five hours to get from my hometown of Tanabe in Wakayama to Osaka, ten hours totravel from Osaka to Shimonoseki, eight hours on the “Kampu Ferry” from Shimonoseki to Pusan (nowBusan), and then between eight and ten hours to get from Pusan to Keijō (Korean “Gyeongseong”;
now Seoul).
Map of Korea

Map of Chōsen (Korea)

Ranam

Showing the location of Pusan, Keijō (Seoul),
Shunsen (Chuncheon), and Mount Kumgang
relative to Mr. Nishikawa’s base of activities in
Kangwon Province

Pyongyang
Mount Kumgang
Shunsen(Chuncheon)

Kangwon Province

Keijō (Seoul)GangneungSea of Japan

Korea
Yellow Sea
Pusan

Shimonoseki

Japan
Source: Dai-Nihon gaichi shashin chō (Facsimile Album of theColonies of the Empire of Japan) (Tōkai Tsūshinsha, 1933).
Some locations have been highlighted.

2

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

The Korean province of Kangwon was located about 100 km (23 ri) east of the capital in Keijō.
Since a rail link had not yet been established to the provincial capital in Shunsen (Chuncheon), I rodethe bus.
I remember that we came to a river along the way. The bus crossed it by driving right onto aferryboat. It wasn’t long afterward that a railroad was opened, allowing for travel by steam locomotive.
I started working for the Kangwon Provincial Office (Department of Industry) of the GovernmentGeneral of Korea.
The daily wage for a newly graduated civil servant in Japan at the time was 90 sen. Since jobs inKorea also included a foreign posting allowance, Japanese employees received 1 yen and 35 sen,which was a premium of fifty percent.
This was a foreign posting allowance, so Japanese workers in the interior (i.e., Japan) and Korean
workers in Korea received the same basic salary.
Even though I’ve been using the word “job,” I wasn’t officially an employee at the start, but worked
my way up from what we called a “nikkyū gekkyū” (i.e. a worker paid daily wages on a monthly basis)to “contract employee” (yatoi’in) to “civil servant” (kanri). The first of these positions was what you
would now call a person working on “probation.”
Korea had government offices in thirteen provinces, of which Kangwon Province was one. What
we called a “province” in Korea corresponds to a Japanese “prefecture.” In terms of size, Kangwon
Province ranked around the middle of the thirteen provinces. It was an extremely mountainous area,with peaks including the famous Mount Kumgang.

Impressions of Korea
The first thing that surprised me when I went to Korea was how bald the mountains were aroundtowns like Pusan and Keijō (now Seoul). Afforestation projects were not yet common in Korea. Since I
had specialized in forestry, this was the first thing that caught my eye.
I later discovered that in Korea, houses everywhere are equipped with wood-burning floor heaters
called ondol. Given that Korea gets extremely cold, these ondol need large quantities of firewood.
And because Korea lacked tree-planting techniques and had no one to provide guidance on suchtechniques, the mountains close to the cities had been more or less stripped bare of trees.
When I came to Korea, my first job was planting trees on these bald mountains. Tree-planting wascalled “erosion control work” and before planting a tree, we would first of all build terraces of 70 to 80
centimeters to prevent the soil from washing away. This afforestation work was extremely importantand had to be done quickly to prevent landslides and flooding. By planting trees close to the seashore,
nutrients would flow into the ocean so that the fishing grounds would also thrive. At the forestry
school in Japan, I had been taught that “a country without trees will perish.”
There were about four or five staff at the erosion control office, one or two of whom were Koreans.
In fact, when we were working, we would hire local laborers (Koreans) and go about our jobs withteams of about thirty or forty people in all.

3

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Erosion control work

Source: Erosion control af forestation work in Seonsan County, Nor th Gyeongsang
Province (Photo taken in 1922; courtesy of the Saitō Makoto Memorial Hall).

Bald mountains stripped bare of trees were on the outskirts of Korea’s cities. I remember beingtaught at the forestry school in Japan that “a country without trees will perish.” Just like in thisphotograph, we would build terraces so that the soil wouldn’t wash away before planting thetrees. We called this erosion control work (as related by Nishikawa).

I was engaged in erosion control work until November of that year. While I started as a nikkyūgekkyū worker, I became a contract employee when I joined the staff of the provincial office at the endof the year and started working in the office.
When I first went to Korea, the Government-General of Korea’s policy of “Japan and Korea as One
Body” (“naisen ittai”) was not just a slogan, but an idea that the Government-General had devised as amajor guideline. I felt that the Koreans and the Japanese were equal, and I never thought it at all odd
for us to work together.
Since Korean cities were not much different from Japanese cities, I didn’t feel any especially deep
emotions. Although I’d gone from my hometown in Wakayama to Pusan, then from Keijō to Shunsen
in Kangwon Province, it didn’t seem particularly different than Japan. I remember Keijō as being agorgeous city, but it didn’t seem to be particularly different compared to Osaka, for example.
Since twenty-three years had elapsed since the annexation, I guess Korea’s townscapes had alreadycome to closely resemble those of Japan.
So much so that seeing people walking in the street speaking Korean and not being able tounderstand them prompted me to think “Ah, I have come to another country.” However, as I could getby with Japanese, I never had cause to feel uneasy.

4

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Keijō shigai no chūō (Main Street, Seoul), Picture Postcard (Year of issue unknown),
Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the GovernmentGeneral of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Top: Keijō (now Seoul)

Bottom: Ginza, Tokyo

Top: The main office of the Bank of Chōsen at the center of the photograph was completed in 1912.
Bottom: Ginza, Tokyo, 1930s. The development of Keijō (Seoul) was remarkable. (Editors)

Source: Rekishi shashin (Historical Photographs) October 1933 issue.

Hwajeonmin: Poor Slash-and-Burn Farmers
My job as a contract employee was to sell portions of national forests and to protect mountainwoodlands. Protection entailed things like extinguishing forest fires and exterminating pine-eatinginsects. We would exterminate the pine-eating bugs by incinerating them in a steel drum barrel. I did
this myself, and arranged for others to do it as well.

5

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Arable land in Korea was divided into the three categories of swidden, paddies, and rice fields. The
people known as hwajeonmin (Jp. kadenmin) were poor Koreans with no land of their own who would
set forest fires in the mountains and then run away to hide nearby. After the forest fires burned out,
they would plant buckwheat and other crops in the exposed soil.
Then, having har vested the crop, they would move to the next woodland, burn it, bring in a
harvest, then shift to another woodland. Stealthily hiding and moving about like a nomad without eversettling down, it was a terribly poor way of life.
I was also in charge of putting out forest fires, as we were obligated to protect the valuable trees we
had planted. I recall one evening, I was heading to the scene of a forest fire when a Korean who had
come with me to fight the fire was startled, saying “a tiger just ran by!” I don’t know if it was actuallya tiger or some other animal, or even if it was something real. The Korean mountains were also full of
wolves (neugdae).
The boundaries of the national forests had been decided prior to my arrival in Korea. In the earlyyears of colonial rule, Japan had apparently spent eight years carrying out the first survey of Korea
and creating a land registry. Lands whose ownership at that time was unknown were protected asnational forests.
A hwajeonmin house

Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Inter views with aformer civil servant at the Government-General of Korea”, Sakurano-hana Shuppansha, 2014

A large hwajeonmin family

The hwajeonmin way of life
Not long after I went to Korea, I learned of the existence of a poor class of people calledhwajeonmin (slash-and-burn farmers). They would burn the mountains, hide from the sightof others, and plant buckwheat and other crops in the recovered land. Eventually they would
harvest their crop and move to another mountain and set their fires there. They lived essentially
6

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

like nomads.
However, over the next ten years, I stopped hearing much about the hwajeonmin as they
settled down to become regular farmers. I expect there are not many people left today whoknow about them (as related by Nishikawa).

I was also in charge of selling off portions of those national forests. Land prices were assessed atvalues that Koreans could afford. These lands were called enkorin, and I will explain later in moredetail about how they were sold off.
As for the hwajeonmin, although I know of them because I was tasked with the protection of themountain woodlands, I suspect that they are no longer very well known today.
Such poor people and straw-thatched houses were around when I first started my job in Korea.
In about ten years, I had for the most part stopped hearing about them, as they had settled down tobecome regular farmers. I feel we mostly stopped hearing about such poor people in Korea because
the guidance and policies of the Government-General of Korea had moved forward and had brought
the people a measure of wealth.

Graduation from the First Class of the Government-General of
Korea Civil Servant Training Center
Since I had studied at a forestry school in Japan, under normal circumstances, I should have been on
track to become a forestry technician. In fact, however, I had wanted to try my hand at administrative
work and was studying on my own. For civil ser vants, there were the Higher Civil Ser vice
Examination and the Ordinary Civil Service Examination. If I passed the Ordinary Examination, I
would have been able to get a post as a manager at the Provincial Office.
In those days, we lacked decent educational materials. Studying under such circumstances, I wasfortunate that the Government-General of Korea had established the First Government-General of
Korea Local Civil Servant Training Center and had begun recruiting applicants. I ended up being
chosen as one of five representatives for Kangwon Province.
The Training Center was the Government-General’s first attempt to train local civil ser vants
over the course of a year. For the first cohort, outstanding individuals were chosen in each Korean
province, with a total of fifty trainees being selected. While Kangwon, the province to which I
belonged, was allocated five places, smaller provinces received only three.
Two of the students at the Civil Ser vant Training School were graduates of Kyushu Imperial
University. Each province had a selection examination. Being selected meant that you would comeas a representative of your province, so everyone studied really fervently. Since the honor of theprovince was at stake, we studied like crazy.
Since the first cohort of students began their studies in July and graduated on March 31 of thefollowing year, the curriculum was shorter than usual, and the studying was intense. While we wereat the Center, a Government-General official came to speak to us at the end of the year.
I’ve been to lectures and the like before, but I’ve never seen anyone study like you boys. If you
were to ruin your health, I would feel bad for your parents. Forget about your studies over the
year-end and the New Year holiday. No studying at all. Go have some fun.
That said, we couldn’t help but study like crazy, and it’s true that we would have fallen ill if we hadstudied any further. On average, we all lost about eight kilograms in weight by the time we graduated.

7

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Two of the five persons representing Kangwon Province were Koreans. I was truly impressed by
the cleverness of the Koreans with liberal-arts subjects.
The Training Center was located in Keijō, where we all lived in boarding houses. As we each
represented our respective provinces, we competed with each other as friendly rivals in the pursuit ofour studies.
During the year we were at the Training Center we received a salary, the same as employees. Thiswas where we were different from a school. It was the Government-General’s first attempt to havethe state devote funds to the training of civil servants. We had been sent to the Training Center as
employees. That end-of-year visit by the Government-General official was the first and only time in mylife that I had been told not to study.
When I graduated from the Government-General of Korea Local Civil Servant Training Center in
1937, I was appointed (as an official civil servant) to the staff of Kangwon Province of the GovernmentGeneral of Korea. I was given this position as a civil servant at the same time as my graduation.

1938: Temporary Call-Up into Military Service
In those days, young men in Japan were all being screened for military service at the age of 20. I
was rated Class B-1, which was the next best after Class A. While those in Class A entered service
immediately, members of Class B-1 were held in reserve. Physically, I think I was in peak condition.
Conscripts served for two years in the military.
With the temporary call-up of men in 1938, I joined the 76th Infantry Regiment stationed along the
Sea of Japan in Ranam (now in North Korea). Most of the regiment’s personnel came from Japan’s
Tōhoku area. Although I had entered the service at the age of 24, I was together with men who camein at 21, and I marveled at the strength and energy of those young fellows. I remember thinking thatthe guys from Tōhoku and Kyushu were incredibly strong. But those from Osaka and Kansai were
weaker, being taunted with things like “Did you lose again, 8th Infantry?” (the 8th Infantry Regiment
belonged to the 4th Division from Osaka).

8

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Ranan hohei nanajūroku rentai eimon (The Gate of the 76th Infantry Regiment,
Ranam, Korea). Picture Postcard (Year of issue unknown), Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last
word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea”, Sakurano-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Gate of the 76th Infantry Regiment, Ranam
In 1938, I was temporarily called up into the army and assigned to a regiment in Ranam (now inNorth Korea). Even though I didn’t experience combat, it was a harsh environment where thetemperature could drop to -20°C. When I was mustered out, the company commander saw me
as far as the train station, praising me by saying, “I’d say you’re taking home only the best partsof the army.” Even so, despite the ideal of “Japan and Korea as One Body” (“naisen ittai”), I
thought it was strange that no Koreans had been conscripted (as related by Nishikawa).

In the service, I remember an occasion when I was cuffed in the face. This was when I was incharge of the kettle, which was a chore handled by soldiers in the army. Finding some tea leaves left
in the kettle, I went to the canteen to dispose of them when two second-year soldiers saw me, yelled“Not there!” at me, then slapped me roundly on both sides of my face. There was no reason for this,and no use arguing about it.
After I joined the regiment, I was hospitalized for a little while. I hadn’t been taught that kind ofbasic thing—I didn’t know. I was surprised at suddenly being yelled at like that and then getting
cuffed, but those kinds of things happened in those days, especially in the military.
Ranam was incredibly cold, with temperatures going down to -20°C. It was unusual for
temperatures to get that cold in either Keijō or Shunsen. So that first year of military training wastruly a slog. Since I was in the infantry, I was trained to become a fully-fledged soldier, marching anddrilling in the use of the bayonet and practicing with live ammunition.
I’ll talk about this in more detail later, but the camp where the military was stationed attracted
quite a few prostitutes. A regiment had about a thousand soldiers, I would reckon. I never visitedthem myself, but the prostitutes included both Japanese and Koreans.
Officers apparently gave instructions that men had to carry condoms on them when they went
9

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

out. Korean bordellos (galbojib) were places that let you either take a woman out with you or stay thenight, and I heard stories of soldiers standing in line to get in on Sundays. The establishments calledsooljib were primarily taverns, but sometimes also served as venues for prostitution.
It was the same as how there are a lot of taverns and brothels around American military bases
today. This is basically nothing more than private enterprise. The point I want to emphasize is that
we shouldn’t assume the facilities were a feature that was unique to the years before World War II.
Things were basically the same as they are today.

Promoted Two Ranks in One Day
I had the good fortune of being promoted by two ranks on the same day. While a soldier who diesin combat gets promoted, I think it’s pretty unusual for a soldier who’s still alive to get a double
promotion.
Since I was hospitalized due to poor health during my first term (of three months), by the time I
returned to the regiment, the administrative responsibilities for the new recruits—jobs like nursing
coordinator (kango gakari)—had already been decided. I said to someone, either a group leader or
one of my fellows, “I worked in a government office before I was drafted, so I’m confident I could
handle administrative work. If you were to make me clothing quartermaster (hifuku-gakari), I’msure I could be of use.” This must have been passed up the ranks right away. The then clothing
quartermaster was asked to step down, and I was chosen to replace him.
The clothing storeroom had things like military uniforms, shoes, shirts, and slippers. Even after
lights-out, I shut the door and continued to organize the storeroom and wrote down what was storedby the light of a naked lightbulb. As I was doing so, one of the officers came by.
“Hey Nishikawa, are you still working?” he asked.
“Yes sir. I still am,” I replied. The officer was checking up on my work.
Outstanding recruits could be made First-Class Private (ittō-hei) in the first screening in
September of their initial year. Then, in the second screening on November 1, those who had risen to
Private could be promoted further to Superior Private (jōtō-hei).
I had joined the regiment late, so I wasn’t selected in the first screening in September. But in thesecond screening in November I was promoted two ranks, first to Private and then to Private FirstClass. I think this is a pretty rare case. One thing I regret is losing my military handbook from thattime.1
When I was mustered out, my company commander took the trouble to see me to the train station.
I feel that was unprecedented. I remember him saying to me, “Nishikawa, I’d say you’re taking home
only the best parts of the army.” He meant that there were cases of those who became Second-ClassPrivates and then tended to shirk their duties and give recruits a hard time. I think the company
commander was pleased that I had been mustered out and would be going home without having
acquired any of those habits.

Work at Mount Kumgang
Mount Kumgang (Kongo-san in Japanese) is a magnificent mountain range in Kangwon Province,
spanning almost 5 ri (about 20km) east to west and 6 ri (about 24km) north to south. The inland sideof the mountain, facing Keijō (Seoul) is called “Inner Kumgang,” while the side facing the Sea of Japan
is known as “Outer Kumgang.” Its stunning vistas are comparable with those of Mount Fuji in Japan.
Its beauty was such that members of the Imperial Household would visit from Japan every year totake in the autumn colors.
1

10

A guntai techō is a booklet that contained personal information about Japanese soldiers.
The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Working for the Kangwon Provincial Office, my first off-site assignment was to oversee thelogistics of transpor ting luggage for the Imperial Household. I can still remember a massiveframed scroll in a temple on Mount Kumgang that read “Mount Fuji, most gracious and fair; Mount
Kumgang, most curious and strange” (Fujisan wa seisei dōdō no kiwami nari, Kongōsan wa kiki kaikaino kiwami nari). It was especially beautiful when the leaves showed their autumn colors.
So much so that our director-general, a Korean, told me “Nishikawa, I want to die surrounded bymaple leaves like these.” The water flowing through the valleys was the color of jade. Here and there,
the craggy landscape took on completely different shapes. And those shapes were extremely pleasant.
Down the Outer Kumgang side was a waterfall, and I’m sure that the name of Maitreya Buddha wascarved into the rocks there. Deeply associated with Buddhism, the mountains were home to many
temples.
One of my jobs involved stringing telephone wires from Inner Kumgang to Outer Kumgang. In
those days, telephones were still rare. Even at the Provincial Office, there was only one telephone
technician, who was assigned to the police. Even though the Government-General and Chōsen
Railroad had made previous attempts to string telephone lines from Inner Kumgang to Outer
Kumgang, they had been unable to do so owing to the steepness of the approach and concerns about
disturbing the natural scenery.
However, with jurisdiction for Mount Kumgang being left to Kangwon Province, I was able to takecare of this job. I was fond of Mount Kumgang, and so I remember being inwardly overjoyed about
this.
At the time, I received a budget of 1,000 yen, which was separate from the cost of the telephone
wire installation itself. I don’t know exactly what that works out to in terms of today’s money, but I
think it must have been worth about ten million yen. I think that budget would have come from theProvincial office, but I don’t remember the details.
I had the idea of establishing a foundation. That way, I figured, the local people would be able toadminister and protect Mount Kumgang in future. I drew up the documents myself and put in theapplication to the Government-General. Since this was before the war, there weren’t any documents torefer to for setting up a foundation, and the review process was stringent. Even so, the approval came
down without any request for revisions.
The “Mount Kumgang Protection Corps” (Kongōsan aigodan) hired local Koreans as staff andwas to help the local people preserve the Mount Kumgang area. I think the membership must haveconsisted of about a hundred Koreans for Inner Kumgang and Outer Kumgang combined.
Given the magnificent vistas that can be seen on Mount Kumgang, we took great pains when
linking the cables to ensure that the wiring would not be visible and did not mar the scener y.
However, given the deep gorges and valleys around Mount Kumgang, this was a difficult project that
required a lot of hard work.

11

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Mount Kumgang “Guryeong
Waterfall”
The largest waterfall on Mount Kumgang.
Just as Nishikawa remembered, the nameof Maitreya Buddha can be seen carved into
the cliff face in a photograph taken almost
80 years ago. The figures in the lower
right of the photograph give a sense of thewaterfall’s scale. (Editors)

Source: Hantō no kin’ei (A Close-up of thePeninsula), edited by the GovernmentGeneral of Korea Railway Bureau (Osaka:
Nihon Hanga Insatsu 1937)

The Governor-General of Korea Attends the Ceremony
for Starting the Foundation
This is something that happened when we held the ceremony for launching the foundation. WhenI extended an invitation to the Governor-General, it was graciously accepted. I think this was the
only occasion over those twelve years that I had a direct encounter with the Governor-General.
Unfortunately, I don’t remember who the Governor-General was at that time. You might think it odd,
but it could be that I was so nervous that I couldn’t even think about it. I feel like the difference instatus was even greater than you would expect today between an ordinary Japanese citizen and thePrime Minister. The Governor-General of Korea was truly an august figure.
At the ceremony to which we had invited the Governor-General, it fell to me to come up with theremarks to be read out by the Governor of Kangwon Province. Even though I devoted a lot of thought
to these, the subsection chief (kakaricho) revised my work to lighten it up. He said my expressions
were overly formal. The director (kacho) put his seal to the result without any change. The directorgeneral (bucho) had a soft spot for me, and while I hoped he might fix the text for me, he did not, andmy turns of phrase were not used in the end. I thought to myself, “Weak. The essence of the text that
I worked so hard on has been watered down. It’s ruined!”
At that time, the subsection chief was a Japanese, the director was a Japanese, and the directorgeneral was a Korean. I thought the governor was also Japanese but looking at my records now I
wonder if he might have been Korean.

12

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Staff at the Government-General of Korea and Affiliated Offices
Issued by the Government-General of Korea
Governor

Parliamentary Councilor

vol. 24 (1933 edition)

Lee Beom-ik

Hyeon Ryeo

vol. 25 (1934 edition)

Lee Beom-ik

Hong Jong-guk

vol. 26 (1935 edition)

Son Young-mok

Hong Jong-guk

vol. 27 (1936 edition)

Son Young-mok

Hong Jong-guk

vol. 28 (1937 edition)

Kim Si-kwon

Hong Jong-guk

vol. 29 (1938 edition)

Kim Si-kwon

Song Mun-heon

vol. 30 (1939 edition)

Kim Si-kwon

Song Mun-heon

vol. 31 (1940 edition)

Yoon Tae-bin

Song Mun-heon

vol. 32 (1941 edition)

Takao Jinzō

Matsumoto KeizōVol. 33 (1942–43 edition)

Yagyū Shigeo

Matsumoto Keizō

Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the GovernmentGeneral of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

List of Governors and Parliamentary Councilors for Kangwon Province
Most of the Governors and Parliamentary Councilors of Kangwon Province from 1933 to 1943
were Korean nationals. Koreans filled many of the top posts in the local government. (Editors)

At the time, however, whether someone was Japanese or Korean made no difference to me, andsince I was not really conscious of that sort of thing, there are some things I can’t remember.
However, this governor took his writing brush to my text and restored the sense of the original.
Even as governor, he had been called to speak with the Governor-General, who was an Army General,and so I feel he would have chosen his words carefully. The wording I had most wanted to put in was
something like: “Should any seek to profane the slopes of Mount Kumgang, my foremost task is tohave the determination and resolve to drive them out.” I felt that this idea was the crux of the speech.
The phrasing strikes a military tone, I think. To use mealy-mouthed prose in front of the GovernorGeneral—who was an Army General—would have failed to communicate anything. I really wanted tohave that message in there. I was so pleased that he chose to keep it.
There was something else that happened at the same time.
At the ceremony for the foundation, the Governor-General suddenly directed us to rearrange how
the members of the Mount Kumgang Protection Corps were assembled. Reserve Second Lieutenant
Kurimoto (who was attached to the forestry staff) had the people reorganize the formation of themembers. When I wondered about the reason, I realized that the Governor-General was timing us. He
said to us, “That was a better time than I get with my inspections of army recruits in their first-term.”
He came across as being incredibly strict.
I wonder what became of the foundation we created at that time.
Since I left everything in Korea after the war was over, I hope someone took up the project. Mount
Kumgang is an internationally famous mountain, and I hope that someone is carrying on the ideas of
the Japanese and the local Koreans from that time.

A Scramble to Procure Parts in Keijō
Incidentally, talking about that telephone installation, we had a devil of a time gathering the necessary

13

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

parts. Because of the war situation, supplies were dwindling. When I asked the telephone technician
to write a list of the parts we needed, he directed me to a shop in Keijō. The technician was of theopinion that, “although there might not be enough parts because of the war situation, you might findwhat you need if you go to this shop. But the shopkeeper is a bit cantankerous.” When I heard that, I
was sure we were in luck. I felt that if I could only show this cantankerous fellow my earnest sincerity,
he would be sure to accept me. And, saying to me, “Let’s prepare all the parts you’ll need to talk by
telephone,” that shopkeeper got everything together for me. Since the need to buy all the parts to beable to talk over the phone was exactly why I had gone to him in the first place, I thought that was
great. Later, the technician expressed his amazement at the range of materials that he had collected
for us. We had been able to get everything we needed.
Stringing the wires required the understanding of the people in the area. We also hired a newcohort of Korean laborers for the work. At the time, the daily rice ration amounted to two and a half gō(about two cups). However, the director-general (a Korean) put in a request to the Director-General (aKorean) to increase the ration to between five and seven gō (about four to five and a third cups) per
worker. With this, the Koreans were able to work contentedly without growing hungry. It was enoughfor them to take leftovers home. I think we had about ten workers on the project. Since going up anddown the mountains, setting up telephone poles, and suspending the telephone wire was heavy labor,
everyone was thankful to have enough food.
Consulting with the police telephone technician, we took the greatest care to make sure that we did
not mar the views of Mount Kumgang. Opening that telephone line over the mountain is something
I’m still proud of. We had achieved what the Government-General and Chōsen Railroad had been
unable to do, without damaging the landscape. That phone ended up being used for emergency
communications on Mount Kumgang.
I was enchanted by the charms of Mount Kumgang and was planning to write a book about it
someday. I went so far as to collect related documents and materials on some of the traditions thatsurvived in the area. However, all of these documents were confiscated by troops occupying Pusan
when I repatriated to Japan after the end of the war, which was a real shame.
However, I still have one piece of paper, featuring a blueprint of the telephone wire installation
project. Anyone else seeing it might not realize what is written on the page, but for me it’s somethingthat holds a lot of memories and pride.

1943: Promotion to Director of Internal Affairs for
Yeongwol County
I was appointed Director of Internal Affairs, which put me in charge of personnel, general affairs,
towns (eup) and rural villages (myeon). Yeongwol County had jurisdiction over seven or eight of thesevillages. Unlike Wonju County, where I was assigned later, Yeongwol had a fairly small population.
Yeongwol County had an Internal Affairs Section and an Industrial Promotion Section, with as
many as sixty staff in total. While the county magistrate (gunsu) was the highest authority, in almost
every county, this was a position held by a Korean national. Under the Magistrate were the Directorsof Internal Affairs and Industrial Promotion. In my case, I was working as the Director of Internal
Affairs under a Korean county magistrate.
I returned to Japan that year to get married, then returned to Korea along with my new wife. The
person I was to marry was already decided for me, so until our wedding I had only seen a single
photograph of her and had no idea what kind of woman she was.

The Tough Job of a Civil Servant
Not long after my appointment as Director of Internal Affairs, the director-general from the14

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Provincial Office paid an official visit, and a welcoming function was organized in his honor. At the
party, this director-general turned suddenly to the Yeongwol County magistrate, who was also in
attendance, informing him that “You’re fired as of now.” Both the director-general and the county
magistrate were Koreans.
The room went quiet. As the county magistrate was an elderly man, I felt sorry for him, but I sat
where I was, looking at the floor without being able to raise my face. It was not long until the county
magistrate was scheduled to step down, which might have been why the director-general said what hesaid.
Speaking of tough, a Japanese technician was fired just for letting himself be treated to a meal witha vendor. During the just over twelve years I worked in Korea, that kind of thing happened only once.
We civil servants all worked very seriously. The civil servants (kanri) of those days weren’t like thepublic servants (kōmuin) of today. Certainly, I’m being a bit arrogant, but we took pride in the factthat we were working on behalf of our country.
As an example of how thorough the orders were, although this was from before I went to Korea,
the Government-General banned civil servants from playing mahjongg. Because of that, I never saw
anyone playing mahjongg, and I never learned how to play the game.

1944: Promotion to the Director of Internal Affairs for
Wonju County
Moving from Yeongwol County to become the Director of Internal Affairs for Wonju County wasa big step up, in terms of the county size. Wonju had a train station from where steam locomotives
departed, and was one of the larger of the twenty-one counties that made up Kangwon Province.
While Wonju had the same number of villages (myeon), their respective populations were quite
different. I had made Director of Internal Affairs at the age of twenty-eight. In those days, a civil
servant became eligible for a pension after 17 years of service. Since a pension made it easier to enjoy
a middle-class lifestyle, it was more common for people to be promoted to Director of Internal Affairs
in their forties and then start living off their retirement pensions by the age of fifty.

1945: Promotion to Acting Director of the Mining Sectionin the Mining Division of the Kangwon Provincial Office
The Mining Division was the department that oversaw mining and industry. Becoming an acting
director in the Provincial Office was a step up from being a county-level Director of Internal Affairs.
Around this time, I bought a Korean-style house. I was appointed to the post around May of 1945. The
end of the war came within three months.
While I was working in the Mining Section in the Mining Division of the Provincial Office, there
was a plan to build a Provincial Branch Office in Kōr yō (Gangneung), in the eastern part of theprovince. I had been asked by my director-general, a Korean, if I wanted to accompany him on a visit
to the site, but with Japan’s defeat in the war, that plan was scrapped. With that, the war ended, and I
repatriated to Japan.
This is an outline of my time in Korea. Having first given an introduction of my career, beginningwith the next chapter, I would like to explain in detail my conversations with the Korean people andthe chain of command at the Government-General.
I worked for twelve years as a civil servant (a functionary) in the Government-General of Korea. I
worked my way up from the probationary level of what we called a nikkyū-gekkyū to become a regularcivil servant (kanri). Before the end of the war, I became an acting director at a Provincial Office, andI held this position when my career in Korea ended.
From the time that I first went to Korea, Japanese and Koreans were treated as equals under15

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

a policy that regarded “Japan and Korea as One Body” (“naisen ittai”). I worked under Korean
superiors, and occasionally employed Koreans as my subordinates. Although we naturally
acknowledged our ethnic differences, we were otherwise regarded as being no different from eachother. Japan’s rule in Korea was fundamentally different from the model followed in Western colonies.
People today engage in speculative thinking based on current values, and what they choose
to believe is largely dif ferent from what things were like back then. While those who wereeducated after the war or have preconceived notions might find my story difficult to believe, in thefollowing chapters, I will describe my memories of the Korean people and the administration of theGovernment-General.

16

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 1:
Distinguishing between Japan’s Annexation of Korea and Colonialism
In 1910, Japan and Korea signed the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty and announced to the world the formal
annexation of the Korean Empire by the Empire of Japan. From that point until the end of the Second World
War, Japanese rule in Korea was to last 35 years.
Here, we compare the fundamental differences between Japan’s annexation of Korea and the colonies ofthe Western powers as discussed in publications such as The Japanese Colonial Legacy in Korea: 1910-1945;
A New Perspective (MerwinAsia, 2015) by George Akita, a Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii,
and Brandon Palmer, an Adjunct Professor at Coastal Carolina University in the United States.
The colonial policies of the West were carried out over an incredibly extended scope of time, while
Japanese rule in Korea took place within the short span of only 35 years.
It took almost 150 years for Britain, after its victory over France, to establish a government office in
the Indian city of New Delhi. In Burma, 62 years elapsed from the storming of Rangoon until the British
established a government office in the city. During its rule over Indochina, France took almost 50 years
from beginning trade with the country to establishing the office of governor-general, while the Netherlands
required almost a century to establish control over Indonesia.
Naming the archipelago stretching from Bali to Sumatra “Queen Juliana’s Necklace” (after the Dutch
Queen), the Netherlands made Indonesia a colony as well.
Despite all the lives lost in these colonies, oppressive rule in the territories continued even after the endof the Second World War.
Almost a million people were killed in the First Indochina War (1945–1954), while the Algerian War
claimed more than 500,000 lives. The Indonesian National Revolution (1945–1949) that led to independence
from the Netherlands reportedly led to the deaths of around 50,000 to 100,000 military personnel and around
25,000 to 100,000 civilians.
Although slavery had been abolished around the world by this time, the exploitation of, and working
conditions faced by, workers on large plantations and in mines were tantamount to slavery.
A notorious example was that of the Congo Free State (1885–1909), ruled by King Leopold II of Belgium.
Belgians in the Congo treated local people with unspeakable abuse, cruelty, and violence in their pursuitof rubber and ivory. Residents who could not meet their quotas had their arms and legs amputated, theirvillages burned, and their women taken hostage.
Through murder, rape, starvation, and flight, a local population that in 1885 had numbered between 20
and 30 million by 1911 had fallen drastically to 8.5 million, nearly a third of its former level.
This was the year after Japan’s annexation of Korea. At the very moment when the Japanese government
and progressive Koreans who were aware of the need for Korea’s modernization had decided on Japan’s
annexation of Korea, in Africa, countless people were dying in misery as slaves of colonies.
In Asia, the Netherlands created in Indonesia a forced labor regime for exploiting the people that lasted
until 1917. On the Indonesian island of Java, food shortages led to periodic famines, with 300,000 islanders
reportedly perishing in 1850.
In a similar fashion, France, Germany, Portugal, the UK, and the USA imposed forced labor practices on
their colonies and clamped down on popular resistance movements.
At the time of his involvement in colonial rule in the Philippines, American General Arthur MacArthur Jr.
(father of General Douglas MacArthur, who served as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during
the Allied occupation of Japan) “ordered increased attention to the destruction of the civilian infrastructurein the towns that supplied the guerillas with food, information, and shelter.”1
1

Brian M. Linn, Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1997), 14.

17

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

US Army Brigadier General J. Franklin Bell testified before a US Senate Committee that when pacifying
the Philippines, an estimated one million people lost their lives—about a seventh of the total population.2
In its suppression of a colonial resistance movement between 1906 and 1908 in what is now Namibia,
Germany sent many of the local Herero natives to concentration camps before drastically reducing their
population by almost half through abuse and starvation.
In the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the British sent the indigenous population who supported theBoers (Dutch settlers in South Africa) into concentration camps, where it is said that over 28,000 people
died. While most of those who were incarcerated were children no older than sixteen, an exact breakdown isunavailable.
In 1930, the UK passed a bill to expropriate approximately 40 percent of the most fertile land of what is
now Zimbabwe as British property, while giving the remaining barren scrub land to Africans.
There are many cases of sharp population declines in colonies throughout Asia and Africa. On theAmerican continent, Native Americans were chased from their homes and massacred, just as many
Aborigines were slaughtered in Australia.
These massacres of indigenous groups by Europeans and their descendants are regarded as belonging to
the past, and for the most part, they are no longer condemned.
In his book co-authored with Akita, Palmer compares Japanese rule in Korea with how Western colonies
were governed and points out three major differences, as follows.
First, Japan did not rely on the forced labor practices that were imposed in the colonies of powers such as
the Netherlands, the UK, France, Belgium, and Portugal.
Second, in suppressing the anti-Japanese resistance movement that occurred from 1907 to 1910, Japan did
not detain Koreans in concentration camps. Forced detention was carried out by the USA, Germany, and the
UK in their colonies.
Third, Japan made far more effort than any other colonial power in building Korean economic, industrial,and educational infrastructure.
Judging from such expert assessments, we should talk about the Japanese annexation of Korea in lightof the contemporary historical background of a period when the Western powers were engaged in harshcolonial practices. While rule by other countries is a history of suffering, it remains true that elements ofprogressive civilization were also introduced. There are any number of examples in which the populace
cannot be described as happy simply because they were governed by their own citizens.
While Japan’s annexation of Korea can be understood from a variety of angles, it must be said that
contemporary critiques of Japan lack a historical perspective that is balanced.

2

18

D.R. SarDesai, Southeast Asia: Past & Present, 4th ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 158.
The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Chapter 2

Korean Colleagues
Civil Servants in the Government-General
I will first explain the structure of the civil service. The Governor-General of Korea (Chōsen sōtoku)
and Civil Governor (seimu sōkan), who were at the pinnacle of the Korean administration, were
known as shinninkan (direct imperial appointees), and occupied a special position as officials who had
been appointed by the Emperor himself.
Next were the chokuninkan (imperial appointees; Class 1 and Class 2), sōninkan (prime ministerial
appointees, Classes 3 through 9), and hanninkan (junior of ficials appointed by ministries andagencies), all of whom were known as civil servants (kanri). Other ranks included contract employees(yatoi’in), employees (yōnin), and temporary employees (shokutaku).
Examinations for civil servants consisted of the Higher Civil Service Examination and the Ordinary
Civil Service Examination. Higher civil servants (sōninkan) held the post of director (kachō) or higher
at Provincial Offices. Before the end of the war, as an acting director at a Provincial Office, I held therank of hanninkan. If I had continued working for a few more years and things had progressed well, I
might have become a director and reached a higher civil service rank.
There was absolutely no discrimination between Japanese or Koreans in terms of civil servant
salaries, and the same was true of advancement. However, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, Japanesenationals posted to Korea received a foreign posting allowance (gaichi teate), which for junior officials(hanninnkan) amounted to the payment of an extra allowance of fifty percent. I believe sōninkan
received a premium of forty to fifty percent.＊ As I recall, during my time, taxes were the same forJapanese nationals and Koreans.
Since civil ser vants were treated similarly in the Japanese home territor y (naichi) and in theoverseas territories (gaichi), I believe that Japanese civil servants in Japan and Korean civil servantsin Korea would have been paid identical salaries.

Living Conditions; the Korean Language
Japanese and Koreans were free to live where they pleased. Before I was married, I lived in lodgingsin Keijō (now Seoul), then in Yeongwol County and Wonju County in Kangwon Province, as well as
the city of Shunsen (now Chuncheon), the seat of the Provincial Office, but in all cases Japanese andKoreans were free to live where they pleased.
However, since Koreans had been living there first, it was usually the case that they congregated
together to build their houses. Japanese were free to build houses inside these settlements if they
so desired. It was certainly not a big deal. That is, it was just like it would have been in Japan; thesame as if an outsider came into a village and built a house there. However, as the Japanese hadarrived later, I suspect it was only natural that there were also cases of Japanese congregating
together. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that the places where the Japanese and Koreans lived wereintentionally segregated.
There were also classes in the Korean language when I was studying at the Civil Servant Training
Center, but to be honest, I did not really study as much as I perhaps should have. This was mainly*Editors’ note: These differences in allowance were eliminated during the term of Governor-General Koiso
Kuniaki. Koreans holding the rank of sōninkan began receiving salaries commensurate with the foreign postingallowance from April of 1944, which was extended to hanninkan officials from April 1945, with the result thatdifferences in salary disappeared.
19

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

because language proficiency had no bearing on my overall grades.
Now that I think of it, I feel sorry for the teacher who instructed me. I think classes were held onceor twice a week. And I think that Koreans would have learned both Japanese and Korean at school.
I’m not really that familiar with what took place at the frontlines of the education system. That’s
because education-related matters were under the jurisdiction of a different department.
At government offices, we basically spoke Japanese. Koreans spoke both Japanese and Korean
among themselves. Because this was only natural, no one ever said anything about it. Between fellow
Koreans, I suspect that speaking Korean–even in the workplace–was sometimes simply faster. No one
ever instructed them not to speak Korean. However, the Koreans also spoke fluent Japanese.

Friendly Relations between Japanese and Koreans
A fellow named Hattori-san (a Japanese) had taught me some Korean, but when I tried it out on a
Korean colleague, he laughed, saying “Nishikawa-san, that’s insulting!” The thing was, he knew I
didn’t mean anything malicious with what I said. And despite this, I never angered anyone. And don’t
we also see this in Japan? Intentionally teaching people curse words in dialect to have a little fun withthem? This kind of scene–which happened everywhere–shows the friendly relationship that existed
between Japanese and Koreans.
There were also many Koreans in the Provincial Office for Kangwon Province. I don’t clearly
remember the total number of people who worked at the Provincial Office. Or rather than notremembering, it might be more accurate to say that I never really took notice. However, it was a factthat the Koreans easily outnumbered the Japanese. Most of the directors-general at the Provincial
Office were Koreans.
Regarding orders from the higher-ups, think of it as being just like with the salaried workers oftoday. There was absolutely no sense of unease for either Japanese or Korean superiors. My Korean
superiors really favored me. I wasn’t at all conscious of ethnicity, and I think it was the same for thosewith whom I interacted.
Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten the name of the Korean director-general who invited me to move tothe planned branch office for the Provincial Office, which I mentioned in Chapter 1. If the new branch
office had been built, and if that director-general had been able to go, he would have become thebranch office manager, a rank equivalent to that of deputy governor. And if I had been able to go withhim, I would likely have been assigned to a post under him equivalent to director-general. He had agreat liking for me. However, before I had given my answer, the war came to an end.
Since our interactions were so completely normal, I had no consciousness of people being Korean
or Japanese. That said, each of us naturally knew whether the other was Japanese or Korean.
With clothing, as well, you could catch sight of the traditional white costumes of Korea in thecity streets, but since Koreans also wore business suits, it was impossible to identify them as suchby sight, as in photos like those in this book. In government offices, both Koreans and Japanesenormally wore business suits.

Mixed Teams of Koreans and Japanese Were the Best
Civil servants in the Provincial Office organized baseball teams that were made up of staff from eachsection to hold a baseball tournament. Baseball was a popular sport in Korea, and Koreans were
extremely skilled baseball players.
Even so, it’s curious that the results were not the same among individuals and teams. Probably
because of the number of people in each section, some of the teams ended up being made up only of
Koreans, and although you might think they would have been the best teams, that was not the case.
20

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

That’s because the teams made up of a mixture of Koreans and Japanese were the best. Even now I
don’t really understand the reason why.
So, even now, it’s my belief that when Japanese and Koreans work together, they will enjoy a great
relationship and be able to generate productive results. Not only in the context of baseball; when I
think back on my time in Korea, it’s something of which I feel absolutely certain.
After the end of the war, once I had returned to Japan, I never got back in touch with the Koreans
I used to work with. After the war, much later, I visited South Korea with my wife, and we went toKangwon Province. I sometimes wonder how everyone from that time is doing now.

Relations with Koreans
While I sometimes went out to eat in the company of Koreans, I mostly did not have any occasion
to visit people in their own homes. I was then a single man, and I’m sure unmarried officials are
the same way today. Even among Japanese, I would think it is quite rare for co-workers to visit eachother’s homes. This wasn’t particularly on account of any ill feeling between us. But sometimes fellow
Japanese and fellow Koreans would naturally end up going out to town in their own respective groups.
This sometimes ended up happening by chance, but this was also a normal occurrence.
There was no mutual uneasiness between Japanese and Koreans. It’s true that there may havebeen some underground activities in which people were fighting for independence, but I never saw
anything like that or heard rumors about such activities. It was the Government-General’s policy totreat “Japan and Korea as One Body” (naisen ittai), and this was so thoroughly implemented thatyou honestly got tired of hearing about the policy. The Provincial Office had a cafeteria reservedfor higher-ranking civil servants, but since I was not such a civil servant, I was not able to eat there.
Naturally, the higher-ranking Korean civil servants did take their meals there.
Government offices were open for half of the day on Saturdays and were closed on Sunday. On
weekdays, I don’t think we worked all the way up to five o’clock in the afternoon. The closure of theoffice at the end of the year (goyō-osame) took place on December 28, with the resumption of business(goyō-hajime) on January 4 of the New Year. As these two days were taken up with briefings by thegovernor, we did little work on either day.

21

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

“Officials and the public celebrate a bountiful year”

Governor-General Minami Jirō and the
Policy of “Japan and Korea as One
Body” (naisen ittai)
The top photograph is captioned “A grinning GovernorGeneral and his granddaughter in Korean ethnic
costume.” Governor-General Minami Jirō spoke Chinese
and also understood some Korean. Attended by a loneinterpreter-cum-bodyguard, he is reported to have had
the habit of strolling around Pagoda Park in Keijō (now
Tapgol Park in Seoul), where he enjoyed conversing withelderly Koreans. Although Pagoda Park was symbolicallyassociated with the 1919 Independence Movement, times
had changed, and some Koreans even called out to theGovernor-General to encourage him in his work. (Editors)

To p : “ A g r i n n i n g G o v e r n o r - G e n e r a l a n d h i s
granddaughter in Korean ethnic costume”
Bottom: “A group of farmers dancing at the GovernorGeneral’s official residence”
Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews
with a former civil servant at the Government-Generalof Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

The Provincial Office was not decorated with the Emperor’s official photograph. The imperial portrait
would have been installed in a kind of shrine called a hōanden, but the Provincial Office didn’t havesuch a shrine.
Although people talk about an “imperialization policy” (kōminka seisaku), we didn’t fly the national
flag or sing the national anthem. Many people misunderstand the imperialization policy. It meant thatboth Japanese and Koreans were imperial subjects. So, I believe that “imperialization” was something
meant to eliminate disparities and discrimination between Japan and Korea.
The Koreans who worked at the Provincial Office were what you might call intellectuals, and never
had to be taught anything again from scratch or forced to fulfill their duties. Since a government
office was a place of work, not a school, covering such basics was not in any case a part of our daily
routine. Since this was the case even at the Kangwon Provincial Office, one of only thirteen Provincial
Offices in Korea, the atmosphere was not really that stifling, even for the pre-war period.
This kind of talk might be surprising for people today. I have very little recollection of flying thenational flag or singing Kimigayo (Japan’s national anthem, “His Majesty’s Reign”) in Korea either
before or during the war. It is important that this was my experience at the Provincial Office.
It might be natural to think that such state symbols would have been featured at the Provincial

22

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Office, a public institution of the Government-General. However, while it is easy to invoke images ofthings such as militarism when we talk about such symbols, the fact is that such things were not apart of my personal experience and did not leave even the faintest impression on me.

“Japan and Korea as One Body”(Naisen Ittai) and Discrimination
I feel that relations between Japanese and Koreans were progressing well around the time that I wasin Korea. At least, that was the case with all the Koreans with whom we interacted. There was nothingalong the lines of discrimination.
In private, I feel that the Japanese felt a sense of pride, and I suspect that the Koreans must have
had some feelings about having been annexed by Japan. But that’s only something I’ve come to thinkin hindsight. It’s not as though I had such thoughts at the time.
While I’m not saying we should just let bygones be bygones, the Government-General consideredthat Japanese and Koreans were one people, and rolled out policies that allowed Koreans to possess
the same rights as Japanese.
The idea of naisen ittai (“Japan and Korea as One Body”) also implies that discrimination existed
in the past. That’s not something I intend to deny. However, the Japanese did tr y to eliminate
discrimination, and worked to ensure that Koreans would also enjoy the same rights. I want toimpress upon my readers that the Japanese went to great pains for these efforts to be realized.
But following the logic of naisen ittai, shouldn’t the Koreans also have been subject to military
conscription? I kept such a thought to myself. I thought it curious that this was not the case.

Marriages between Japanese and Koreans
Not long after I started going to Mount Kumgang, there were Japanese-style inns, called ryokan, in
both Inner Kumgang and Outer Kumgang. While on business, I frequently stayed at the ryokan in
Inner Kumgang, which was home to a lighthearted and beautiful young Japanese woman. She musthave been seventeen or eighteen years old.
I was a twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old chong-gag (bachelor). When I stayed there, that young
lady and I would play Japanese checkers (gomoku narabe). Those games were memorable for me, andit seems the same for her too. There weren’t many Japanese living in that area at the time, and I’ve
often wondered what became of her later on.
Some time later, I heard a rumor that she had married a Korean chef employed by the ryokan. I
think there were quite a lot of marriages between Japanese and Koreans.
After I was married, I bought a little house in Shunsen. We were quite close to a large restaurantstyle establishment that had a staff of five or six Korean women. The matron was a Japanese woman
with a Korean husband.
That matron most likely would have stayed in Korea when repatriations were taking place. I thinkmost Japanese women who married Koreans stayed on in Korea even after the end of the war.

A Memorable Korean Woman
Here is another anecdote. At the age of twenty-eight, I became the Director of Internal Affairs for
Yeongwol County. Soon after I took up my appointment, the unit chief and other staff came to me andsaid the following.
“Director, please hire this Korean woman!”This was not the view of the unit chief alone, but apparently that of everyone in the office.
“She’s so beautiful,” they said, “it would be enough just to have her around the office.”

23

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

When I asked them, “If that’s so, why didn’t you say so to my predecessor?,” they replied that “ourlast director refused.”
I told them to have the woman come to the office for an interview. The following day, the woman
presented herself at the Yeongwol County Office, so I inter viewed her. I had never before seen
anyone as beautiful as that woman. I guess you could say she was of medium height and build. And
her Japanese was also flawless, with no hint of an accent. Even the unit chief, who was a Japanese,
spoke with the accent of his native region, and Koreans usually spoke with a distinctive accent.
But this woman’s Japanese was impeccable. I never saw another woman in Korea of such beauty
until my repatriation to Japan.
“Would you like to work at the County Office?” I asked her. To which she replied, “Please let mego home to think about it. I will give you my answer later.” Then, the following day, that woman cameto the County Office and said to me, “If I come to work at the County Office, I have one condition. If
you cannot meet it, I will have to refuse,” she said.
What do you think her answer was? It was not something I could have expected. Namely, “Directorof Internal Affairs, sir, if you will make use of me, I will come to work for you. But if I have to work
under anyone else, I refuse.” This put me in a real quandary. To work at the County Office, she would
have to be assigned to work under one of the unit chiefs, not me. We didn’t have personal assistants
like people do these days. Though it’s not polite to say that she was just a woman, for someone in her
position to say “I’ll work under the Director of Internal Affairs, but no one else…” My honest feelingis that such a statement put me in a difficult situation.
After I had dwelled on the matter for a little while, I noticed that there was a small organizationin the County Office that was as yet unstaffed, so I hired the woman as a staff member for theorganization. The unit chiefs and the rest of the staff seemed to be completely satisfied simply to
enjoy the presence of that woman sitting amongst them.
I think she likely came from a good Korean family. It seems that she spoke Japanese at home
as well. Among the Koreans were those who spoke Japanese as it was taught, and spoke in clean,unaccented Japanese. I harbored no romantic feelings toward this woman but considered her more asa younger sister or member of the family.

Difficult Experiences with Koreans
While I don’t have much memor y of speaking with Koreans about Korean culture or ideological
topics, I do recall an occasion when I angered one of my subordinates, an older Korean man.
The thing was, I addressed him using “omae” as a term of familiar address. I said “omae, omae”(“Hey you! Hey you!”) casually, as I would have in Japan. It seems that he took “omae” as a term ofcontempt, and although I had spoken idly, he bristled, saying “Don’t make a fool of me!” I was at aloss, so sought help from a Japanese colleague beside me.
I asked the fellow beside me for help, explaining that I hadn’t meant any offense, and that Japanesepeople often used familiar terms of address, such as the “omae” for “you” and “ore” for “I” and/or “me.”I don’t think younger Koreans would have thought so, but apparently older people felt this was a kindof discrimination.
Now that I think of it, it might have been a bit discriminatory. You would never say “omae” to asuperior. Because in Japan, you would only say “omae” to someone of equal or lower rank to yourself.
I guess as an older man, being addressed that way by a younger person would have been irksome.
Now that I think of it, I think it was rude of me to say “omae” to an older man. Especially in Korea,
you have to show special respect to older people, even when they are your subordinates.
That said, it was a matter of course to be called “omae” by one’s superiors. That’s the only thing I

24

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

can remember when it came to ethnic issues.

The Yangban and Classes
I’m aware that Korea was once home to an aristocratic class known as the yangban (scholar-officials).
But that’s all I know. From Koreans, I never heard people say that they came from a yangban
background, or that they came from poverty, but they have worked hard in their studies. I think the
Koreans in the government office were what you might call the intelligentsia. Some people lived
in the Korean countryside in thatch-roofed houses, and there were certainly disparities in terms oflifestyle. Especially when I first arrived in Korea, poor people were more conspicuous.
However, they did not lead a wretched existence, and it seemed to me that they were somehow
able to make ends meet. The same was true in Japan, where I think there were major disparities
between life in the cities and life in the countryside. However, by around the end of the war, disparitiesof that extent had been reduced in Korea, as well, and I no longer saw people living in such extreme
poverty.
A typical Korean citizen could have become a civil servant if he devoted himself to his studies.
There were recruitment examinations for entering the civil ser vice, much like the civil ser vice
examinations of today. Looking at my own photographs, you really wouldn’t know who is Japanese andwho is Korean. With our arms around each other like that, questions about a person’s backgroundwere beside the point.
I sometimes heard that marriages between fellow Koreans faced problems. It seems that marrying
within the same lineage, or bloodline, posed a difficulty. I imagine this related to ancestral pedigrees,
and while I don’t know the details, such things sometimes occurred.
When I tried to introduce the organizational staff member I talked about earlier—the beautiful
Korean woman—to a Korean acquaintance from the office, this fellow looked into the woman’sfamily background and remarked to me that he would like to marry her. She declined to consider theprospect, however. This might have stemmed from the particularities of her family background.

Korean Customs
I never developed very deep relationships with my Korean neighbors. However, there was one man,a fellow by the name of Lee, whom I paid some money to help me out with my house. He was a very
good man. However, as he was a hired servant, we didn’t really socialize as friends. In those days,
most households would have employed servants. This fellow Lee carried our luggage to the stationeven after the war had ended.
Something I was surprised to see when I visited Korean houses just after I first arrived in Korea
was that women kept chamber pots in the house for calls of nature. While men normally went to thetoilet, women would use chamber pots in their rooms. Initially, I had no idea about what these pots
were. I only rarely went to Koreans’ houses, and for that matter, I did not frequently visit the homes ofJapanese.
Although I never saw a Korean wedding ceremony, I often saw funerals. Wailing in a ritual manner(“aego, aego”), the mourners would all be weeping loudly. Given that everyone in the procession wept
so loudly, this seemed to me a custom that we did not have in Japan, but I thought it did have somesimilarities to the recitation of the nenbutsu Buddhist prayer in Japan.

Enkorin Forests (Woodlands Sold Off to People with Connections
to the Land)
This was something that happened when I was tasked with selling off portions of a national forest.
25

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

There was a single property for which applications were submitted by two separate individuals. One
Japanese and one Korean submitted applications for the sale.
When I set out to make a sur vey, my Korean super visor, the director-general, said to me,“When you do the survey, please investigate fairly. I want you to be impartial, and not make any
measurements that would unfairly favor the Japanese party.” Thinking to myself that of course I
intended to conduct a fair investigation, I said, “Yes sir, understood!” When I went to the site inquestion, however, I found that the person whom we had taken for Japanese was in fact a Korean who
had undergone sōshi-kaimei (i.e., adopted a Japanese-style name). So, not a big deal! Both men were
Koreans. Going back to the office, I reported this to the director-general.
“Director-general, the fellow we took for a Japanese was in fact Korean. Both men were Koreans,so there was no distinction or discrimination in the survey.”
We said nothing at all about sōshi-kaimei rendering the application invalid or the Korean directorgeneral telling me which party to favor. In any case, the Government-General had said that we were
not to discriminate.

Disputed Lands Survey
Top: Stakeholders and witnesses in Goyang County, Gyeonggi
Province asked to observe a survey based on documents
submitted as evidence.
Bottom: Conducting fact-finding interviews and inspecting
documents provided by stakeholders in Pongsan County,
Hwanghae Province.
Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews witha former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea”,
Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014Land Title Survey (Disputed Lands Survey)
The first sur veys and registration of land in Korea were carried out by the Japanese. Land
(mountain bushland) whose ownership was unknown at the time was protected as national
forest. In the event of title disputes, a “disputed lands survey” was carried out to investigate
documents and listen to the explanations of the stakeholders. (Editors)

If I am not mistaken, the name of that director-general was Gye Go-jun. He hadn’t undergone sōshikaimei. The director-general of whom I spoke earlier, the one who showed me such favor at Mount
Kumgang, was someone else. I’ve said before that I can’t remember who was Japanese and who

26

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

wasn’t based on names and photographs. Since it was taken for granted for Japanese and Koreans to
be together, or to be each other’s superiors and subordinates, and because Korean people were also
free to undergo sōshi-kaimei to adopt Japanese-style names, I didn’t pay attention to such matters at
all. I will talk about sōshi-kaimei in more detail a little later.
The purpose of the national forest surveys was to determine to whom we would sell property. I
was the official responsible for investigating such matters. Even now, when a decision is made to sellstate-owned land, bids will be tendered by a large number of applicants. In those days, we didn’t havetenders, and when surveys found someone with a connection to the land in question (enko kankei), wewould privilege that person in the sale. In the absence of any existing connection, we would remain
impartial.
The idea of “connection” (enko) refers to the presence or absence of a past relationship with themountain in question or the property for which the application was being made. Such connections
could come in a variety of forms. Rather than signifying that someone was the original owner of acertain piece of land, enko referred to connections in a more superficial sense.
Since land divisions in Korea at that point were still not cut and dried, questions of land ownershipwere sometimes unclear. Although cases where ownership was clear were supposed to have beenregistered by their owners at the time of land registration, this was a rule that had been decided by
the Government-General prior to my coming to Korea. Properties for which ownership was not clear
had been designated as national forest. For requests to purchase such land from the government, we
would investigate any connection of significance, such the ongoing use of the forest for woodcutting,or use by a family ancestor.
Since this was not an auction, even an offer by someone to pay twice the going rate would
not necessarily determine how the sale went. Ultimately, prior connections were the primar yconsideration. These woodlands were called enkorin (“woodlands encumbered by prior connections”),
and as much as possible, they were all sold to those who could demonstrate prior connections to theland. Those who could show the greatest degree of connections would be considered first.
The market price was set at the price of similar land in the local area. Prices were low, andaffordable even to those who were not wealthy. Since this was mountain woodland of which the state
had no need, the national government was grateful for citizens to buy up as much land as possible.
Applicants had only to come forward for sales to be processed. Responsibility for this project fell to
the Forestry Section.
A large number of properties were sold off. This was in part because Kangwon Province alone had
twenty-one counties, each of which would normally have seven or eight towns (eup) and rural villages(myeon). On top of this, Kangwon Province was a relatively mountainous area. We investigated in turneach of the applications that were sent to us by the County Offices.
Such sales by the government (haraisage) were carried out without any public notice, andwere executed in response to requests by the individuals concerned. In most cases, they involved
mountains near the applicants’ own homes. I suppose the wooded mountains behind people’s houses
were sometimes national forests, rather than their own property. Yet although the mountains had
belonged to the state, people had maintained connections to them through cutting firewood for ondol
floor heaters or through trees planted during the time of their ancestors.
Among the requests proposing such sales, some involved lands to which the applicants had noconnection whatsoever. However, even more than money, we emphasized past histor y. Even if it
was slight, it was our policy to sell off lands to those who had some connection to the mountain inquestion. Surplus woodland (fuyō sonrin), to which no one had laid any claim, was sold off without
prejudice to both Koreans and Japanese.

27

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Those who purchased these lands became landlords, and I would imagine sometimes brought intenants to work the property. Before they became national forests, no one would have known whoselands these were, and would have remained untouched.＊

I Want People Today to Know How Things Actually Were
Over the twelve years I spent in Korea, Koreans and Japanese worked together with each other. This
is not to say that everything was the same for everyone. However, the Japanese paid attention to try
to eliminate discrimination and ensure that there would be no grounds for complaint. I don’t thinkanyone nowadays is aware of the situation about enkorin.
The current President of the Republic of Korea, who is always speaking ill of and showing
contempt for Japan, is paving the way for even children to be exposed to anti-Japanese teachingsfrom a tender age. To do such a thing would poison the character of even the most promising South
Koreans.
As Japan and South Korea are not at war, I do not think there is any reason to speak negatively.
While Koreans might feel angry at having been a colony, Japanese rule did no harm. If there was any
exploitation, what are we to make of enkorin? I worked underneath Korean supervisors, surveying
land without bias to find even the slightest connections.
If there was any such exploitation, I would like to hear an example. Do they not know the legacy
of Western powers in Asia and Africa? That Japan governed well is by far the most importantconsideration.

＊
Regarding land ownership: Land rights in Korea have long been a subject of some confusion. No precise legal documents
regarding land existed; there were only deeds of sale known as mun’gi. Such documents, moreover, were frequently forged.
Otherwise, there were registers, known as yang’an, that listed the area and productivity of agricultural land. However, evenwhen the land was harvested, tax collection in Joseon Korea was rigorous; landowners and tenants frequently ran away
and were forced to engage in illicit cultivation. An example of this is found in the example of the hwajeonmin mentioned
by Nishikawa. Over the years from 1911 to 1918, the Government-General carried out a land survey. During this period,
landowners’ declarations and boundary line markers were posted, and when measurements were taken, the surveying
was witnessed by the landowners themselves or their agents. Those who took issue with their assessment had 60 days
during which they were able to register a complaint with the regional land survey committee in their respective province.
Furthermore, a three-year window was allowed for re-examination in specific cases.
Because the Government-General sur veyed land with boundaries that had been unclear since the Joseon era, thesurveying has contributed to a narrative that Japan exploited Korea. Yet it was precisely because of this existing confusionthat surveying and registering the land were necessary. In addition, Koreans at the time have testified that there were some
Koreans who at the time of the assessment made applications for swaths of land that exceeded their own, robbing others of
their property. There are also stories of people who were not able to understand what the survey was for, and thus unable to
make declarations regarding their own lands.
Rather than auctioning off land, the Government-General, as Nishikawa relates, was carr ying out investigations todetermine who had even the slightest connection to the land in question and to sell the tracts as enkorin. (Editors)

28

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 2:
Education
To understand education in Korea, we first need to understand education in Japan. The Japanese school
enrollment rate in 1878 had reached 41percent; by 1902, it was in excess of 90 percent.
Foreigners who visited Japan, from the time of Commodore Matthew Perry of the “Black Ships,” were all
astounded at the high Japanese literacy rates.
On the other hand, although Korea had for a long time been implementing its equivalent of the Chinese
civil examination system (kējǔ zhìdù; an examination system used to recruit civil ser vants for China’s
imperial bureaucracy, known as gwageo in Korea and kakyo in Japan), education for the general public wasminimal, amounting to no more than teaching Confucianism and calligraphy in very simple schools known
as seodang. This state of affairs constituted the extent of general education in Korea.
In statistics for 1911, a year after the Japanese Annexation, the enrollment rate at seodang was just under
7 percent. These figures, low even compared to the Japanese rate of 41 percent thirty-three years before,taken together with a comparison with the content of Japanese education, indicate that Korea was behindeven more than the statistics would suggest. While some people have claimed that Japan “robbed” Korea of
its hangul characters, literacy had not spread to the populace even back then.
The phonetic alphabet of hangul characters is regarded to have been instituted by Sejong the Great, thefourth king of Joseon-dynasty Korea. But because Chinese-style civil-service examinations were carried out
in Chinese script, hangul was derided as eonmun (“vernacular script”) and not taught at seodang. However,the fact that it had fewer characters and was pronounced phonetically made hangul easy to learn, reportedly
helping its gradual spread among the general populace.
In 1886, Hanseong jubo, Korea’s first modern newspaper (a weekly government publication), began
publishing in a mix of Chinese characters and hangul script. People including Kim Yunsik and Inoue
Kakugorō, who were supported by Fukuzawa Yukichi, were behind the publishing effort. The typesetting forthe hangul script had been created at Fukuzawa’s own expense at a type foundry in Tsukiji in Tokyo.
This newspaper was issued by the Office of Culture and Information (Bangmunguk), an organ of the
Korean government. Hangul had not been officially used in public documents prior to this time. That hangul
had been adopted by a government newspaper was a matter of immense significance, as well as being adevelopment in which Japan had played a major role.
The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894 saw the beginning of the Gabo Reform in Korea, at which
point Japan began to recognize Korea as an independent country rather than as a vassal state of China. Fromaround this time, all legislation and decrees were issued in hangul, Chinese characters with translation, or ina mix of Chinese characters and hangul script.
After establishing the Office of Resident-General of Korea in 1905, Japan rapidly expanded the number ofschools and expended energy on education in Korea. Enrollments rose from 2,000 students in 1906, to 17,000
in 1910, and then to 45,000 only two years later. By 1936, the goal of establishing “a school in every village(myeon)” had been realized.
Although there was a period when classes conducted in the Korean language ceased just prior to theend of the Second World War, it is an indisputable fact that the Japanese had been teaching hangul and that
Korea’s school enrollment rates had been rising for more than thirty years.
The Korean language was used both in private life and in the government’s administrative agencies, andwas never subject to prohibition. Considering that official languages in many former colonial countries weremandated to be the same as that of their suzerain powers, leading to the loss of traditional mother tongues,
Korea is arguably a special case.

29

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Sōshi-kaimei: “Establishing a Family Name and Changing One’s Name”
Notification and acceptance of sōshi-kaimei was instituted from 1940.
In Korea, a distinction is made between clan name (sei) and family name (shi). Whereas one’s clan nameexpresses pedigree through the male line, and is retained even after marriage, the family name is a title thatshows a person’s membership in a family.
The practice of sōshi-kaimei was a complicated procedure by which Koreans could create a new familyname (sōshi) that had not previously existed in Korea, and which also allowed the traditional clan name tostay on the family register. Individuals who wished to change their given name (kaimei) were able to do soby paying a fee.
Unless such a notification was made, a Korean’s clan name (sei) would officially come to be regarded as
the family name (shi). The procedure of sōshi-kaimei was not made compulsory by the Government-General;on the contrary it was purely voluntary.
Sōshi-kaimei was a practice that was deeply linked to aspects of Korea’s class society. For privilegedclasses such as the yangban (gentry), the clan name was proof of a person’s pedigree; that these classes
were fiercely opposed to sōshi-kaimei was only natural. For the lower classes, however, it represented an
excellent opportunity to break free of the endless strictures of Korea’s class society.
For Korean women, the clan name or the given name were never even listed in family genealogies.
According to Tsuboi Sachio, a former provincial police superintendent with the Government-General of
Korea, the police force was opposed to sōshi-kaimei from the outset.
There was a concern that if Japanese and Koreans could no longer be distinguished by their names as aresult of sōshi-kaimei, this would cause confusion for police officers at the forefront of criminal investigations.
The underlying intention here was the desire to be able to distinguish between Japanese and Koreans
when cracking down on criminal activity. So why was sōshi-kaimei carried out?
In brief, Japan, in pursuit of its goal of “Japan and Korea as One Body” (naisen ittai), as the GovernmentGeneral of Korea, was trying to give the same rights to Koreans and Japanese, which is to say the right toidentify oneself by a Japanese name.
The fact that ver y few Korean civil ser vants working in the civil administration, not even provincial
governors, underwent sōshi-kaimei (i.e., they did not adopt Japanese names) indicates that the administration
did not compel Korean people to undergo sōshi-kaimei.
If sōshi-kaimei had been made compulsory in Korea, Korean civil servants should have been the first to
be forced to choose either to undergo sōshi-kaimei or else to resign, but in practice the reality was that somechose to undergo sōshi-kaimei and some did not.
Governor-General Minami Jirō urged people to take heed of the fact that “sōshi-kaimei should not be
misunderstood as something compulsory,” a statement that was reported in the newspapers of the day.
For some privileged classes, it is only natural that there should have been strong dissatisfaction towarda system that allowed people to change their clan name—a source of pride and a proof of pedigree—into afamily name at will. Nevertheless, those in the slave class that had existed from before Japan’s annexation of
Korea did not even have family registers, let alone clan names.
Moreover, in Manchuria, it was reported that Koreans were harshly discriminated against by the Chinese,and so sought to use Japanese names.
While households that submitted notification of sōshi (the creation of a family name) accounted for morethan eighty percent of all households, notifications for kaimei (given name changes) accounted for less thantwenty percent.
For Korea’s class society, sōshi-kaimei represented a drastic social reform.

30

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Chapter 3

Organizational Over viewof the Government-General of Korea
Overview of the Government-General of Korea andits Constituent Offices, Divisions, and Sections (As of December 31, 1935)

GovernmentGeneral Secretariat

Home Affairs
BureauTreasur y Bureau

Industrial Bureau

GovernmentGeneral of Korea

Agriculture andForestr y Bureau

Legal Affairs
BureauSchool Affairs
Section

PoliceAdministration
Bureau31

Secretary’s OfficeCouncilors’ Office
Personnel Section
Foreign Affairs Section
Documents Section
Accounting Section
Extraordinary Census Section
Local Administration Section
Civil Engineering Section-Home Affairs Bureau
Civil Engineering Branch Offices
Tax Section
Judicial Affairs Section
Finance Section
Commerce and Industry Section
Mining Section
Fisheries Section
Fuel Extraction InstituteCenter for the Promotion of Commerce andIndustry
Geology Survey Center
Agricultural Administration Section
Agricultural Product Section
Land Improvement Section
Irrigation Section
Forestry Administration Section
Forestry Section
Legal Affairs Section
Penal Section
School Affairs Section
Society Section—Museums
Editorial Section
Observatories
Police Affairs Section
Security Section
Libraries
Health Section

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Overview of the Government-General of Korea andits Constituent Offices, Divisions, and Sections (As of December 31, 1935)
Central Council

Communications
BureauOffices of theGovernmentGeneral of Korea

Railway Bureau

Bureau ofAgriculture andForestr y

Legal Affairs Bureau

Educational Section

PoliceAdministration
BureauGeneral Affairs Section
Research Section
General Affairs Section
Administrative Section
Insurance
Administration Division
Insurance
Operations Division
Insurance
Business Division
Accounting Section
Engineering Section
Electric Works Section
Maritime Section
Communications Staff Training School
Seafarers’ Training School
General Affairs Section
Supervisory Section
Business Section
Operations Section
Construction Section
Engineering Section
Works Section
Accounting Section
Railway Staff Training School
Agricultural Administration Section
Agricultural Production Section
Land Improvement Section
Irrigation Section
Forestry Administration Section
Forestry Section
Legal Affairs Section
Penal Section
School Affairs Section
Social Affairs Section
Editorial Section
Observatories
Police Affairs Section
Security Section
Libraries
Health Section

Savings
Administration Office
Postal Offices
Telegraph Offices
Telephone Offices
Post Offices
Airports

Maritime Branch
Offices
Railway libraries
Railway clinics
Railway Affairs
Administration Bureau
Construction Affairs
Administration Bureau
Factories

Museums

Overview of Nishikawa’s Career in Korea
1933
Enters service with the Department of Industry for Kangwon Province
1937
Appointment as civil servant in Kangwon Province
1943
Promotion to Director of Internal Affairs for Yeongwol County, Kangwon Province
1944
Promotion to Director of Internal Affairs for Wonju County, Kangwon Province
1945
Promotion to Acting Director of the Mining and Industry Section in the Mining and Industry Division of the Kangwon Provincial Office32

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Overview of the Government-General of Korea andits Constituent Offices, Divisions, and Sections (As of December 31, 1935)

CourtsHigh Court—Court of Appeals—
District Courts—
High Court Prosecutor’s Bureau—
Court of Appeals Prosecutor’s Bureau

District Court Branch Offices
District Court Branch Courts

Main Prison

Prisons
Prisons for Juveniles

Local Jails(Branch Offices Correctional
Officer Training Center)

Branch Locations—District Court Prosecutor’s Bureau—
District Court Branch Prosecutor’s OfficePenitentiaries

Offices of theGovernmentGeneral of Korea

Police Training School
Deposit Bureau
Forestr y Stations
Charity Asylum (Saisei-in)
Leprosy Sanatorium
Reformator y School (Eikō gakkō)Central Research Laborator yAgricultural Research Laborator yGrains Inspection Office
Sheep Farm
Veterinar y Serum Production Unit
Forestr y Research Laborator y
Fisheries Research Laborator y
Korea Tariff Petition Review Committee
Forestr y Sur vey Commission
Seafarers’ Tribunal
Korea Postal Life Insurance Review Committee
Keijō Imperial University

Hospital affiliated with the Facultyof Medicine University Library

Public Schools
Libraries
Korean Historical Editorial Board
Government-General of Korea Committee
for the Preser vation of Treasures, Historical
Sites, Scenic Areas, and Natural Monuments
Source: Chōsen sōtokufu shisei nenpō (Annual Repor t on the Administration of the Government-General of Korea),
Government-General of Korea, ed. (Chōsen Sōtokufu, 1939)

33

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Organizational Overview of the Government-General
It is perhaps no wonder that people today think of Korea during the Annexation Period as having
been something special. This is because so much time has passed, and most of those who witnessed
the period are no longer with us.
However, I feel that the greatest impact in this case has been made by the mass media and thefourth estate, which are spreading news about things that did not even exist. They disseminate
allegations about things that are disconnected from reality, and people who have no knowledge of
how things actually were in Korea end up believing them.
I would like to talk about what the Korean administration was really like. The first message I wantto convey to younger people is the following. Namely, that
“Korea during the Annexation Period was no different from peaceful countries such as Japan andSouth Korea today.”
The people there just went about their normal daily lives. Those who are expecting an extreme
tale like in the movies will likely be disappointed, I expect. The first thing I want to emphasize is that
nothing particularly strange was happening in the streets.
The thing that I want to set straight in your heads is that Korea in those days was not a battlefield.
Naturally, as it was not a battlefield, things that were out of the ordinary did not happen, or if they did,
the police would then come running. It was no different from the way things are today.
Moreover, many Koreans held positions in the police administration system, and many Koreans
were also appointed as provincial governors, who were at the top of this administration.
Someone who committed an infraction would be arrested, whether Japanese, Korean, or aserviceman.
Knowing these circumstances, if we look at the framework of the Korean administration, thethings that I am now going to describe should be easy to understand for today’s Japanese andKorean citizens. If you feel that something seems unnatural or if you encounter something you don’t
understand, please remember these two points:“Korea was not a battlefield” and “Koreans held executive posts in the administration.”
Korea was divided up into thirteen provinces. These do (provinces) were the equivalent of Japan’s
prefectures. If you think of provinces as prefectures, Korea’s gu (counties) were the same as Japan’sgun, and the municipal units of bu, eup, and myeon (cities, towns, and rural villages) as the equivalentsof Japan’s shi, machi (chō), and mura (son), the discussion will be easy to follow.

The Government-General and Military Headquarters
First of all, on paper, the chain of command within the Government-General of Korea proceeded
downward from the Government-General to the Provincial Offices, to the County Offices, and then to
the cities, towns, and rural villages, respectively. Civil servants in government offices were unable toact arbitrarily. While the top-down chain of command is the same as the current system, this was in
the pre-war system, so this structure was even more rigid. Those who disagreed with their superiors
or ignored their orders would, in the worst case, have to resign their positions. When I did anything, I
would always take instructions and get permission from people above me before taking action.
The Government-General of Korea was in charge of the administration, while the Korea Military
Headquarters operated on a separate chain of command. Given their equal relationship, neither wasable to tell the other what to do. For all its authority, the Military Headquarters could not interferewith the Government-General of Korea. While the two organizations did cooperate with each other34

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

on occasion, their separate jurisdictions meant that any requests for some kind of collaboration
required a considerable amount of procedures. Since the Government-General of Korea was staffedby civilians, while the Military Headquarters was exclusively concerned with military matters, thetwo organizations had basically no involvement with each other.
During the twelve years prior to the end of the war, I interacted with the army on just one occasion.
Retired soldiers known as reservists (zaigō gunjin) were on standby in case of an emergency,
and the Military Headquarters would call them up once a year. We called this the call-up and review
process (kan’etsu tenko). The only time I was involved with the military was when I was called on tocooperate during my time in Yeongwol County. This was when I came to know Major Yamazaki of
the Military Headquarters. Even the military was still required to obtain permission from the civilian
administration when they sought to use some government office or facility.
The Government-General and Military Headquarters were under completely different chains ofcommand.

Differences between the Police and Military Police
Because the police were under the jurisdiction of the administration, the provincial governor (whowas sometimes Korean) was at the top of the hierarchy. While the Director-General of Police who wasconcerned with the maintenance of law and order was Japanese, the provincial governor served as his
superior.
Just as it is impossible to abduct people in Japan today, it was impossible in Korea at the time
to detain Koreans arbitrarily. There was not much crime in Korea, and it was peaceful, like Japanoutside of wartime. Since there were police like there are today, people could not commit infractions
arbitrarily, either on their own or as part of an organization, and when such things did occur, there
would be a terrible uproar. Because Korea was so peaceful and relaxed, it was highly unlikely thateither Japanese or Koreans would do anything that would be an issue for the police, and I neverwitnessed such things.
As for whether crime was particularly common among Koreans or the Japanese, before addressing
such questions, there was very little crime to speak of.
While I think that some individuals were involved in an underground independence movement, I
never saw overt evidence of this. That is how underground activities are like. While I think that suchpeople exist in small numbers everywhere, even today, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such anindividual in my daily life. People opposed to the regime exist in Japan as well, but you don’t usually
see them out on the streets. It was the same thing.
If a crime took place, police officers would naturally come to make an arrest. If a soldier committed
an infraction, military police would drag him away. Because the military police had oversight over thearmy, they did not have anything to do with the general population.
During my time in Korea, the police and the military police were completely separate from eachanother. While some people misunderstand the distinction between the police and the military police,these were completely separate organizations.
In the army, if you went out and were late in returning to your unit, you would be punished. If a
serviceman broke a rule, he would be confined in the stockade. For serious crimes, a serviceman
would undergo “major confinement,” which meant being sent to serve time in a military prison.

Viewpoint as a Director of Internal Affairs
Next, by talking about my own experience as Director of Internal Af fairs, I will explain theorganization of the Government-General in a bit more detail.

35

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

I think it was a bit unusual for me to have become a Director of Internal Affairs at the age oftwenty-eight. This was normally a post that someone would take immediately prior to retiring. It was apost to make someone look good, to add a bit of shine to his resume, and would be given to someone
on the eve of his retirement once he passed forty.
Since I was in the first cohort of graduates from the Government-General of Korea Local Civil
Ser vant Training Center, I feel that the Government-General might have been watching to see
whether the first group of students did well.
The honor and the authority of the Government-General was at stake. While this is just my own
imagination, I would have been quite dismayed if I had been told that even if such training centerswere created, they would only turn out people who were not of any use at all. Surely the GovernmentGeneral was expecting to see people say that “Ah, there’s something that must have come of his
having graduated from the Training Center.” I studied desperately, endeavoring to get better results.
Twenty-eight is the age when a civil servant finally becomes a fully-fledged official in his own right.
However, shortly after being promoted to the post of Director of Internal Affairs of Yeongwol County,
I sent a letter to the provincial governor, in which I wrote that “I have tried to find out whether there issome special reason for the poor track record of conscripted labor in the county, but I have not beensuccessful. However, I would definitely like to try to make things better.”Things with conscripted labor in Yeongwol County did get better. Partly as a result, in ten months,
I was promoted to a job with the much larger county of Wonju.

Labor Conscription (Chōyō)
I would like to explain the chain of command using this example of conscripted labor. By conscripted
labor, I am referring to how the Government-General set quotas for a certain number of young Korean
men to the provincial offices, who in turn assigned the number of workers to recruit to each county,
the counties in turn doing so to the eup and myeon (town and rural village) levels of government, withworkers to be recruited in each myeon. Obeying the instructions, which were to “try to have themcome to the County Office” was of course compulsory. This was the same as how Japanese wereconscripted to work in the coal mines in mainland Japan (naichi).
While this can be said to have involved a degree of coercion, there were those in Korea who did
not respond to a conscription notice. My predecessor had not been able to assemble the assigned
number of people.
I don’t know whether there was a Korean equivalent of a Women’s Volunteer Corps (joshi teishintai) like the one that existed in Japan. During my entire career as a civil servant in Korea, I never evenheard any mention of the labor conscription of girls or women.

Seeking Understanding through Explanation
Prior to my appointment, although we had been allotted a quota of ten people, the office had only
been able to recruit around five or six workers. Even so, when I was allotted a quota of ten people, I
recruited ten people.
Here’s how I did it. I gave a proper explanation to the local mayor or other relevant people andasked them to explain things in a way that would convince the workers themselves. I think I also
spoke to the school principal and policeman stationed in the area, saying “We’ve been assigned tocarry out this kind of task and would very much appreciate your cooperation.” The mayor, school
principal, and local police chief were known as the “Three Chiefs” (san chōkan) of a municipality.
I talked about labor conscription in such a way as to convince, rather than to compel. I knew that
if I tried to recruit workers without a thorough explanation, everyone would feel reluctant and would

36

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

not go to Japan.
I asked the officials to explain that the workers would go to Japan where they would do the samejobs as Japanese people and also be able to receive proper wages.
No one would like simply being ordered to “Go to Japan! Go to Japan!” There may also have beensome cases where things were done against a person’s will. I once heard the miserable story of anindividual who was so reluctant to go that he jumped into a well and ended up dying. During my timein Korea, I heard such a tragic story only once. But whether it is true or not, I can’t say.
Once you provide a proper explanation, you will be understood. So, I was able to recruit the allottednumber of workers. After I was transferred to Wonju County, the Governor-General’s secretary cameto ask me to tell him the reason for my success, since the results of my labor recruitment had been so
good.
I explained the procedure I have described here to the secretary. Rather than having the recruits
come to the County Office by only telling them that they were being drafted, it was better to obtainthe cooperation of a municipality’s Three Chiefs, who could be trusted, and ask them to convince theworkers.
Some people did not go because they were made to go against their will. Since even suchdevelopments were enough to attract the interest of the Governor-General, I suppose there must havebeen difficulties recruiting enough workers everywhere. I gave this secretary a ham as a souvenir—
something of a rarity in the cities—to take home with him.
As for the destinations for conscripted laborers, my responsibilities were solely for Japan. We took
the recruited workers to Pusan (Busan), where they then were transferred and put under the chargeof a person from the Government-General. In Japan, if they went to the coal mines, they should
normally have been paid the regular wages earned by coal miners. Even if some workers testified thatthey were beaten or slapped, this was a matter of course in those days. They were not beaten because
they were Korean; the same misfortune befell Japanese workers too.
*Note: The following description of labor conscription (chōyō) is an excerpt from Gaimushō happyō-shū (Ministry of Foreign
Affairs Bulletin), no. 10 (July 11, 1959). (Editors)
The National (Labor) Conscription Ordinance (Kokumin chōyō rei) applied not only to Koreans (who at that time were ofcourse Japanese citizens) but to all Japanese citizens. Whereas the ordinance had already come into force in Japan as ofJuly 1939, its enforcement in Korea was put off as long as possible. It was not until September 1944 that the ordinance was
first applied to workers who were sent from Korea to the home territories in Japan. The period when so-called conscripted
Korean laborers were brought to Japan was only from September 1944 to March 1945 (after which their arrival in Japan
became impractical due to the cessation of regular ferry service between Shimonoseki and Pusan).

37

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Asahi Shimbun, July 13, 1959
Gaimushō happyō-shū (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Bulletin), no. 9 (July 1959) and Kōhyō shiryōshū (Publication
Source Book) no.7, Gaimushō jōhō bunka kyoku (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information and Culture Bureau)

Koreans in Japan, Most Residing Here of Their Own Free Will
In an item in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Bulletin (no. 10, July 11, 1959) with the title “The History of the
Arrival and Repatriation of Koreans in Japan, with Particular Reference to Conscripted Workers in Wartime,”
the Japanese government stated that after investigating the situation of the approximately 610,000 Koreans inJapan, it concluded that “while the majority of Koreans currently residing in Japan are mistakenly understoodas having been forcibly brought to Japan to work—a slander that is being repeated in some parts of the world—
this runs contrary to the facts of the matter.” (Editors)

The Reality of Japanese-Style Name Creation and Adoption(Sōshi Kaimei)
Policies such as those guiding the creation and adoption of Japanese-style names by Koreans(sōshi kaimei) and labor conscription required formal administrative procedures on the part of theGovernment-General. Abiding by the policy of sōshi kaimei was not compulsory. If it had been, an
ordinance should have been issued by the Government-General to that effect. On this point, theGovernment-General stated extremely clearly that “the creation and adoption of Japanese names isvoluntary.”
I even heard that Koreans wanted to take Japanese names. Among the Korean civil servants at
the Provincial Office, many elected not to adopt Japanese-style names. Although I don’t remember
exactly, more than half of the people around me fell into that category. If there had been an order that
Koreans had to adopt Japanese names, this would have to have been obeyed first and foremost by
Korean civil servants.
Korean civil ser vants, as people in the Government-General’s organization, would have been
unable to avoid paying attention to what the government said. That they did not change their names isevidence that the creation and adoption of Japanese-style names was voluntary.
After the war, I read an article in a Japanese newspaper that a Japanese school principal had forced
his students to adopt Japanese-style names. I don’t know whether the report was true, but he might
have done that with the idea that he could take credit for what he did. However, any such acts of38

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

compulsion were carried out by a tiny minority of people as individuals; it was not something done by
the administration.
Even at the Provincial Office, although there were some Koreans who adopted Japanese-stylenames and others who did not, no one thought anything of the matter. Rather than it being somethingthat was necessary to do, because Koreans were also Japanese citizens at that time, it seemed likesomething they could do if they wanted to. It was not something that was forced on anyone.
If people had not been able to create and adopt Japanese names, that would have led todiscrimination. Having stated that they were the same as the Japanese, if Koreans were unable tochange to Japanese-style names, this would have been a contradiction. Koreans had the right to adopt
Japanese-style names if they chose.

Source: Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun Chūsen-ban (Osaka Asahi Newspaper,
Central Korean edition), March 6, 1940

“The Creation of Family Names is Voluntary. Not to be Understoodas Compulsory. Governor-General Calls Urges Caution”
The newspapers of the day carried the following statement by Governor-General Minami Jirō on
the policy of sōshi kaimei (the adoption of Japanese-style names) calling for people to be careful.
“It has come to my attention that there has been some misunderstanding regarding the creation ofJapanese-style names. This is absolutely not compulsory. Out of the Emperor’s august benevolence(ōmikokoro) and in the spirit of universal brotherhood, the Emperor has opened the way for
our Korean brethren to create names in the same manner as those in the home territories as anembodiment of the spirit of Japan and Korea being a single body (naisen ittai). I would like theessence of this point to be thoroughly understood, so as to avoid any misunderstanding.” (Editors)
39

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

The “Comfort Women” (Jūgun Ianfu)
Now that you have understood the chain of command as it existed in the organization of theGovernment-General, I would like to discuss what has been called the forcible recruitment of comfort
women. The recruitment of comfort women is a matter that belongs in a different dimension, one thatmust not be confused with Government-General policies such the creation and adoption of Japanesestyle names and the conscription of laborers. It is absolutely not the case that the recruitment of
comfort women was ordered by administrative agencies because this would have been impossible.
Allow me to explain a little more about prostitution in Korea. Brothels in those days included
bordellos (galbojib) and taverns that served as fronts for prostitution (sooljib). Such establishments
popped up quickly, since there was business wherever the army went. Sooljib were taverns selling
Korean rice wine, known as makgeolli, and Japanese sake, and were primarily places for drinking
alcohol. However, in some cases these taverns would have one or two girls on their staff that would
also engage in prostitution.
In contrast, galbojib (karubochibi in Japanese) were a kind of inn used expressly for prostitution.
They were what could be called brothels where one could also stay for the night. Such places could
also be found in the Korean countryside and existed in any village big enough to have a government
office. Both kinds of establishment were operated by Koreans, and I also drank at sooljib now and
then.
These establishments only had Korean girls; having fun with Japanese girls meant going toJapanese-style restaurants (ryotei). Since these establishments were expensive, being intended forgeisha parties, clientele wishing to hire prostitutes would go to galbojib.
That said, I think that sad instances of young women being sold into prostitution also took placein Japan, in the drought and poverty-stricken areas of the Tōhoku area. Such things were hardly
confined to Tōhoku, as Japan also had a long history of licensed red-light districts.
There were even cases in Korea of parents selling their own children into prostitution. At that time,
there were cases of poverty driving parents to such practices without even informing their children ofwhat they were doing.
There were also those who made a business out of procuring and traf ficking in women(professionals known as zegen), and these traffickers sometimes deceived women with smooth talk.

Traffickers (Zegen)
Although I think that people today might not know what zegen (traffickers) are, they were people who
made their living seeing to the needs of prostitutes, and they existed in Japan as well. They would
buy daughters from their parents and then sell them on to sooljib and galbojib. Such traffickers were
Koreans. They recruited young Korean women, so people who knew where to find and sell young
women would have to have been Korean. It would have been impossible for a Japanese to suddenly goto Korea and engage in such practices without a good knowledge of the language and the land.
I think that women sold to establishments such as sooljib and galbojib were sometimes broughtby traffickers to southern regions or to Manchuria. However, this was something done by Korean
civilians.
Since the Korean Military Headquarters would not have known where women were, even if they
had tried to recruit them, the orders would have been relayed from province to county, then fromcounty to village, as was the case when laborers were conscripted, but nothing like that took place.
If such things had been done by a public institution, documentary records would definitely survive.
Orders in Japanese institutions are issued on paper. I never saw or heard of such things. If individuals
had attempted to abduct women forcibly against their will, they would have been arrested by regular40

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

policemen or the military police. Provincial offices and police forces were staffed with many Koreans,
and many provincial governors as well as my own superiors were also Korean.
The military police kept order among the soldiers, while police officers maintained order among
the general public. The military police would never ask a member of the general public what he or
she was doing because their scope of authority was different. Things were basically no different fromeveryday life in Japan, and there was nothing that was out of the ordinary.

Right: “Daughters of Farming Villages are Easy Prey”(Source: Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun Nansen-ban[Ōsaka Asahi Newspaper, Southern Korea Edition], March 30, 1939)

Articles Left: “Gang Accused of Kidnapping Women Finally in Custody”(Source: Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun Nansen-ban[Ōsaka Asahi Newspaper, Southern Korea Edition], November 21, 1939)

These newspaper ar ticles discuss the abduction of women by unscr upulous Koreanbusinessmen. It was reported at the time that such abductions were accomplished throughcoercion or deceptive flattery. This is extremely similar to the testimonies and means that havebeen reported with reference to the comfort women issue. A hundred victims or more are
mentioned in the article on the right, and twenty-seven in the one on the left. (Editors)

Declaration as a Director of Internal Affairs
Since I served as a county-level Director of Internal Affairs, I know that all this would have been
impossible. If I had only done a fraction of the work handled at a Provincial Office, I would not have
known whether the government had been involved in something like the forced recruitment of
prostitutes.
However, because I served as a county-level Director of Internal Affairs, I can say with confidence
that Japanese civil servants (and Korean civil servants) were not involved in the forcible recruitmentof prostitutes, either by rounding them up, transferring them to the military, or even forcibly haulingthem away. If I had not served as a Director of Internal Affairs, I would not have had such a broad
knowledge of things.

41

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

But although I would not have known about this if I had only been involved in the managementof deforested mountains or supervising mines, because I was involved in general administration asa Director of Internal Affairs, I can say with confidence that Japan was not involved in the forcible
recruitment of prostitutes.
Even today, administrative organizations are still inflexible “vertical silos.” When conscripting
workers, the Government-General struggled to recruit even ten men at the county level, to the extent
that I had to ask for the cooperation of the “three chiefs” at the municipal level.
I also know that the army was not involved in that sort of thing. In the disciplined and strict pre-war
military organization, and moreover with a civil service and police force that included many Koreans,
it would have been impossible even to consider attempting such arbitrary abductions in Korea, which
was not a war zone.
Therefore, I can say with confidence that in Korea, up until the end of the war, it would have been
inconceivable for soldiers or government officials to have forcibly abducted or otherwise recruited
comfort women. For one thing, I did not hear of, or see the expression “comfort woman” during that
period.

The Final Witness
Although there should have been others with knowledge of such things in both Korea and Japan
shortly after the end of the war, I think I am now probably about the only one left with a grasp of thecircumstances as they were at the time, which was gained through my work as a civil servant.
What I mean is that I was already thirty years old at the time of my repatriation, and I am now
almost one hundred years old. No one now knows what things were like eighty years ago. And even if
there were people with such knowledge, most would now be dead. Even if some were still alive, if you
will pardon my rudeness, I suspect they would mostly have forgotten what they knew. But my own
mind is clear. Although I have grown old and feeble, I can say with confidence that what I have said istrue, without any hint of doubt.

Korean Volunteer Soldiers
I think Korean volunteer soldiers would have been conceivable. While I never met any personally, I
can imagine the feelings of young Korean volunteer soldiers, who would have been conscious thatthey were citizens of Japan. In Japan, as well, many youths volunteered to join the special attack corps(tokkō-tai).
At that time, since it was said that Koreans were just the same as the Japanese, with “Japanand Korea as One Body” (naisen ittai), I think it would have been only natural for people to haveexperienced the same emotions as the Japanese and volunteered out of a desire to be useful.
If Koreans had been discriminated against or were pressured by bullying, I think they would havenever wanted to go. As discrimination was not allowed under the policy of naisen ittai, I feel it would
not have been unusual for most people to believe in the policy and want to work because they too felt
they were Japanese.
I think it would have been ver y natural for Koreans at the time to have felt that way, thoughnaturally there would also have been others with a strong ethnic consciousness who did not think thatway.
In other words, this is to say that not all Korean people shared the same feelings or opinions.

I Did Not Witness Korean Conscripts Being Sent Off
The Government-General recognized the freedom of the Korean people. They were free to create
and adopt Japanese-style names, and free not to adopt such names. They did not have to go to war,
42

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

but they could volunteer if they chose. It was only after my return to Japan that I learned that military
conscription had been introduced in Korea just before the end of the war.＊
Koreans were not conscripted into the army at all when I served as the Director of Internal Affairsin Kangwon Province. Since Korea at that time was at peace, unlike the Japanese mainland, if a family
member were to have been conscripted into the army, I think that friends and neighbors would haveturned out in great numbers to see them off. Rather than sneaking off alone, I think they would havebeen sent off in grand style. When soldiers were called up in Japan, the entire village would turn out
to shout “Banzai!” and see them off.
I suspect that although the conscription ordinance was enacted, I am doubtful as to whether it was
actually enforced.

Policies for Making People Imperial Subjects (Kōminka Seisaku)
While we talk about “policies for making people imperial subjects,” at the time, everyone in Japan was
subject to such policies. It was not something forced onto only the people of Korea.
The Government-General did not abuse its authority. First of all, the elimination of discrimination
was a major policy of the Government-General of Korea. There were no forced visits to Shinto shrines.
The policy for making people imperial subjects was consistent with the idea of naisen ittai. That is,
Koreans also enjoyed the same rights as Japanese.

Disgust for Japanese Who Discriminate Against Koreans
One of the motives behind the adoption by the Government-General of Korea of the policy of naisen
ittai might have been discrimination in the past. The situation in Korea had changed considerably
over the nearly ten years since the time I first arrived in 1933, and there were plenty of differences.
At the time of my arrival in Korea, there had been an atmosphere of contempt for Koreans among
many of the Japanese on the Korean peninsula.
I don’t have any concrete examples to point to; it was simply a feeling that I got.
This was partly because it was common at the time for Koreans to be employed as servants inJapanese households. I suppose I somehow came to feel that that Koreans were discriminated against,
or else perhaps looked down upon.
However, since the level of people’s lives in Korea just after the Japanese Annexation of Korea (in1910) had been considerably different from that in Japan, I suppose that, at the time, it couldn’t behelped.
For my own part, although I was single when I went to Korea, I was loath to take a Korean-born
wife, even if her parents were Japanese nationals. This was in part because there was a tendency
among those who went to Korea in the early days of the annexation to discriminate against Korean
people, and I had the feeling that it would be difficult to mix with people like that.

＊

Koreans began to be subject to the conscription ordinance from September 1944, but although they were sent to training

centers after undergoing recruitment examinations and began to be assigned to units of the home territories from July
1945, the war ended on August 15 without having their having gained any actual field experience. However, the recruitmentof volunteer soldiers had already begun in 1938. In 1943, as many as 300,000 young Japanese of Korean descent who
recognized Japan as their native country volunteered for the military, 6,000 of whom passed inspections and entered military
service. At least 20,000 Korean volunteers who died in the war are now venerated at Yasukuni Shrine. Between fourteen andtwenty of these servicemen are said to have volunteered and been killed in service with the special attack corps (tokkō-tai).
We need to understand that for Korean youths at that time, Japan was already their native country. (Editors)

43

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

I think that the people’s sentiments toward Korea differed according to when they arrived. In mycase, such a long time had passed since the annexation that even the terms Nikkan heigō (Japanese
Annexation of Korea) and Nikkan gappō (Japan-Korea Union) were no longer used.

System for Koreans Volunteering for
Military Service
Entrance Ceremony for the First Group of Recruits at the Keijō
Army Volunteer Training Institute in 1938. A total of 2,946 people
applied for 400 places, after which recruitment was expanded
to 480 volunteers. In 1943, the number of applicants exceeded
300,000. At the bottom of the photograph, Governor-General
Minami Jirō can be seen saluting as he reviews the troops. (Editors)
Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word:
Interviews with a former civil servant at theGovernment-General of Korea”, Sakura-nohana Shuppansha, 2014

Korea and the Course of the War
For the most part, my colleagues and I did not talk about the war situation. People were certainly
short of food and supplies, but I never heard of any cases of people starving to death.
The procurement of supplies did not go smoothly when I sought materials to run the telephoneline up Mount Kumgang, and we were running out of the necessities of daily life. But compared to thesituation in Japan, where many people had died in air raids, things were relatively peaceful.
Even though I was stationed in Korea, which was so peaceful, I thought that I might end up goingto war anyway. I think that all Japanese men must have felt the same.
Although I was asked by Major Yamazaki of the Korean Military Headquarters if I wanted to enlist
in the army as a clerical officer and was also invited to visit a private-sector coal mine in Yeongwol
County, thinking back now, I am glad that I didn’t go.

44

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun Nansen-ban (Osaka Asahi Newspaper, Southern Korea Edition), Jan. 18, 1938

Korean Volunteer Soldiers; “A Sudden Deluge of Volunteers”
At least 14 volunteer soldiers from Korea, including Kim Sang-pil, were killed in suicide
missions. Another Korean serviceman, Yang Chil-seong, went on to dedicate himself to the
independence of Indonesia alongside several Japanese comrades after the war. In addition, Park
Chung-hee, who later became the President of South Korea, applied to study at the Manchuria
Military Academy in 1940, where he adopted the Japanese name Takagi Masao before pursuingfurther studies at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Japan. (Editors)

Making My Mother Worry
When I first went to Korea to start my job, I dropped in to visit a friend along the way. I had been toldby the principal of the Forestry School that if I went to Shunsen (Chuncheon), I should call on one ofhis students who had passed the Higher Civil Service Examination, a fellow named Takeuchi Shunpei.
Takeuchi told me to send a telegram to my parents saying that I had arrived in Korea andaccompanied me to the post office to do so. When I later returned to Japan for the conscription exam,
my mother told me that until the telegram came saying that I had arrived safely, she had been unable
to sleep at night. I regretted not having better understood my parents’ feelings.

Divine Intercession
I was in Korea when I tried to return to Japan after receiving word that my mother was on the vergeof death. I set out from the County Office and rode the train from Keijō to Pusan (Busan). While I was
aboard the ferry from Pusan, a message came over the ship’s loudspeakers.
The broadcast said “Mr. Nishikawa from Kangwon Province: A telegram has arrived for you.
Please come to the chief purser’s office to receive it.”I received the telegram informing me that my mother had died while I was on the ferry. WhenI read the message, tears began streaming down my face. My mother was 68 years old. Seeing mytears, the person beside me said to me “Even though she was still so young.” That made me happy. I
was comforted by those words, somehow.
45

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

When I arrived in Shimonoseki, I boarded the train bound for Osaka. Asking my seatmate on the
train the fastest way to get to Tennōji, he told me to take the Loop Line. At Tennōji Station, seeing me
running with my luggage in hand, the station attendant stopped the train for me just as it was about
to depart, calling out “Hold up! Let this fellow on board!” and allowing me to catch the last train for
Tanabe. At the time, I felt “when human beings try as hard as they can, the gods will intercede to help
them.”

Source: Asahi Shimbun evening edition for October 21, 1943

Student Soldier Mobilization Ceremony at
Meiji Jingu Gaien Stadium in Tokyo
On October 21, 1943, 75,000 Japanese youths assembled at the National Stadium in Meiji Jingu
Gaien Park. The exemption on military service for students ages twenty and older had been
revoked as a result of the deteriorating war situation, and in rainy weather, a celebration washeld for the mobilization of 25,000 soldiers who would be sent to the front. (Editors)

46

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Kanpu renrakusen oyobi sanbashi (Shimonoseki-Pusan Ferry and Jetty)Picture
Postcard (circa 1922) , Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil
servant at the Government-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

The Shimonoseki-Pusan Ferry
In August 1904, in the middle of the Russo-Japanese War, the First Japan–Korea Treaty was
signed. Japan then sent financial and diplomatic advisers to Korea to begin rebuilding thecountr y. Along with the May 1905 opening of the Keifu Railway (the “Keifu Line” between
Keijō and Pusan), which was built thanks to an enormous investment of Japanese funds andhuman effort, Japan’s San’yo Steamship Co. began operating a regular ferry service between
Shimonoseki and Pusan, known as the “Kanpu Ferry,” from September of the same year. In
December 1905, the post of Japanese Resident-General of Korea was established by imperial
decree. After the Annexation of Korea in August 1910, the ferry began to be massively crowdedwith passengers and freight, resulting in the expansion of the size of the Kanpu Ferr y andthe addition of more ships to the service. However, in 1943, the US Navy torpedoed and sankthe Konron Maru, resulting in the deaths of 583 people. With the deterioration of the wartime
situation, the ferr y ser vice became difficult to maintain and was curtailed after June 1945.
(Editors)

47

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 3:
The Fiction of the “Comfort Women”
When we look into the South Korean allegations against Japan about the “comfort women” issue, we findthat they are deliberate misrepresentations and are attempts to manipulate public opinion.
Despite a furious search by researchers from around the world, not a single credible source or witness
on the issue has emerged. Nevertheless, the “comfort women” issue has been a topic of major focus in the
media, where it has been debated as if it were a historical fact. In this column, we would like to summarize
the debate.
In 1965, when Japan and the Republic of Korea signed the Treaty on Basic Relations, the “comfort
women” issue was not brought up for discussion by the South Korean side.
In 1973, the terms “military” and “comfort women” were first linked to one another with the publication ofan exposé entitled Jūgun ianfu (The military comfort women) by the journalist Senda Kakou. Since then, thisneologism has entered widespread use, even though it did not exist before or during the Second World War.
Senda’s book included mistranslations of South Korean news reports and figures that were given without
any evidence to back them up.
In 1985, Yoshida Seiji published Watashi no sensō hanzai (My war crimes), in which he confessed tobringing women from the island of Jeju and pressing them into service as “comfort women.” However, theresidents of Jeju denied this report, and Yoshida himself eventually admitted that his testimony was a lie.
Then, in 1991, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper ran a story that was clearly false.
Under the headline “Former Korean Comfort Woman Overcomes Reticence to Speak Out Half a Century
After the War,” the article reported the existence of a comfort woman who was allegedly a surviving memberof a Women’s Volunteer Corps (joshi teishin-tai). However, the comfort woman in question, Kim Hak-sun,rather than having been forcibly abducted into the Women’s Volunteer Corps, was later discovered to havebeen sold by her mother as a kisaeng (a female entertainer) for the sum of 40 yen. Uemura Takashi, theAsahi Shimbun journalist who wrote the article, is married to a South Korean whose mother was serving as
the executive director of an organization providing support for former comfort women.
Although the Japanese government began examining its archives from December 1991, the Women’s
Volunteer Corps was completely different from comfort women, and not a single fact has been founddemonstrating the abduction of comfort women by the authorities.
The Asahi Shimbun then sought once again to steer public opinion and aggravated the situation.
On January 11, 1992, the newspaper devoted its front page to the issue under the headlines “Documents
Showing Militar y Involvement in Comfort Stations” and “Government Wavers on its Position.” These
headlines referred to documents discovered in the archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies
by Chuo University Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki. But in the text of the article, a claim by South Korea that
“between 80,000 and 200,000 Korean women were forcibly abducted under the auspices of a volunteer
corps” was presented without any evidence, so as to give the reader the impression that this assertion was
somehow related to the documents in question.
However, the documents, under the subject headline “Matters Concerning the Recruitment of Female
Workers for Military Comfort Stations,” were about efforts to crack down on unscrupulous people in theprostitution industry in Japan, as well as the selection of personnel, and went to great effort not to invoke thename of the military.
The publication of the Asahi Shimbun article was impeccably timed to appear five days prior to a state visit
to South Korea by Japan’s Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi, who reportedly made apologies and statementsof remorse as many as eight times during his visit.
Most decisive of all was the “Kōno Statement” of 1993, excerpted below, in which Chief Cabinet Secretary
Kōno Yōhei issued words of apology using vague expressions and without showing evidence.

48

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

[..] The then Japanese militar y was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment andmanagement of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the
comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of themilitary. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own
will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took
part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere. […]The Government of Japan would like to take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies
and remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable
physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.
With the Kōno Statement, the Japanese government acknowledged the comfort women issue, and thetext of the statement has been cited repeatedly since its release.
In 2014, testimony by Ishihara Nobuo concerning the investigation of the comfort women issue at thetime of the Kōno Statement was reported in the Sankei Shimbun newspaper. Ishihara was the Deputy Chief
Cabinet Secretary when the Kōno Statement was released.
A study that had been conducted in South Korea that inter viewed 16 women claiming to be former
comfor t women was found to be extremely sloppy, and it also came to light that the South Korean
government had been directly involved in preparing the drafts of the Kōno Statement. Moreover, Ishihara
testified before the Budget Committee of Japan’s House of Representatives that “although we additionallyconducted searches and investigations of documents in United States libraries, no objective data was foundthat would support the claim that women were forcefully recruited.”
Even now, the Kōno Statement is regarded as decisive evidence because it is a government statement
issued by Japan. A prompt investigation into the truth and the circumstances behind the release of the Kōno
Statement are necessary, as well as its retraction.
Even afterwards, the Japanese attorney Totsuka Etsurō, after defining “comfort women” as “sex slaves” in
1992, was engaged in petitioning the United Nations to find the Japanese government accountable for theirtreatment.
In 2007, the United States’ House of Representatives adopted a resolution condemning Japan’s treatmentof “comfort women.” Since 2009, the construction of “comfort women statues” has been advocated primarily
by residents of Korean descent.
Although they are a fiction for which no evidence of any kind has been demonstrated, the “comfort
women” suddenly emerged as a major issue beginning in the 1980s. From the earliest days until the issue
was reframed as a problem, anti-nationalist and leftist activists in Japan have been stirring up the comfort
woman issue.
This gradual manipulation of public opinion, by having the Japanese apologize for a private sex industry
that could be found in any countr y and pay reparations via the Asian Women’s Fund, has led to theacceptance of allegations that the Japanese state was involved in the forcible recruitment of women.
Japan’s mass media, particularly the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, has played a leading role in making thispossible.
The so-called “comfort women” issue did not come to light at a time when many people in both Japan andSouth Korea would have been familiar with the situation of the period in question. It was raised as an issue
only after witnesses to that era had dwindled in number.
In 1952, the president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, unilaterally established the so-called “Syngman
Rhee Line,” illegally occupying the island of Takeshima in violation of international law.
Yet Syngman Rhee did not talk about the comfort women issue after World War II, not even once.

49

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Chapter 4

Korea at the End of the Second World War

Source: US Army Signal Corps (public domain photograph, 1945)

The Ruins of Tokyo in the Aftermath of Air Raids
During the Tokyo Air Raid, more than 100,000 people were burned to death by incendiary bombs in asingle night. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly. All of Japan’s major cities wererazed by air raids, while two atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Japan’s postwar recovery began amidst such devastation. (Editors)

Source: Juraku-bi no Keijō (Keijō (Seoul), the City of Joy and Beauty), picture postcard (dateunknown), Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at theGovernment-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

The Flourishing City of Keijō (Seoul) Was Not Ravaged by Air Raids
As citizens all over Japan became frightened at the prospect of bombings and having to flee to air raid
shelters, Korea was fortunately spared worries about air raids or food shortages. Nishikawa reportsthat evacuation drills were unknown, and that even conversations about the progress of the war werelargely absent in the workplace. Although Korea was able to make a start by taking over this Japanese
infrastructure after World War II, the country soon plunged into the Korean War. (Editors)
50

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Japan’s Defeat
While in Korea, while I was delighted to hear of the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor, my frank
impression of the start of the war against the USA and Britain was that the situation had grown dire.
In terms of their size, the USA and Japan were on a completely different scale, and as I was aware that
the USA was also the richest country in the world in terms of resources, I felt that things had become
extremely grim. Although Japan had maintained the upper hand throughout its battles with China, I
felt that we might have overextended ourselves in the South Pacific.
I was excited when Japanese forces sank the British Navy ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS
Repulse off Singapore. Thinking back now, I guess it was around the time of the battles of Midway andGuadalcanal that I began to worry that Japan would lose.
To tell the truth, although I didn’t expect victory over the USA, I didn’t expect that we would lose
the war either. I thought that there would be a stalemate or that we could somehow draw things to aclose. But the idea of a total defeat…
During the war, I too was prepared for the day when I would have to put my life on the line to fightfor Japan. At that time, all Japanese were willing, “if it was for the nation.” The same was true for both
men and women.
At work, I don’t think I ever heard anyone talking about the war situation. In Korea, we didn’t haveto worry about air raids, and unlike the Japanese mainland, things were peaceful, to the extent that I
don’t even remember any evacuation drills.
That’s precisely why, before the end of the war, I was invited by the Korean director-general who
was so nice to me to accompany him to work in Kōryō (Gangneung), where there were plans toestablish a branch of the Kangwon Provincial Office. The same director-general also told me that hedid not expect Japan to lose the war. Given that he was preparing to relocate to Kōryō and had invited
me to join him, I feel that most Koreans had no expectations that Japan would be defeated.
I learned of the Tokyo air raids and about Hiroshima and Nagasaki over the radio. My memory
is one of terrible bombs having fallen, as at that time I don’t think we spoke of atomic bombs or
A-bombs.
However, those who were active in the underground may have had access to news from foreigncountries. It struck me as mysterious how quickly they had made preparations, since people were
waving Korean flags all over town just past noon after the Emperor’s “Jewel Voice” radio broadcast (onAugust 15, 1945, announcing Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration).

The “Jewel Voice” Broadcast
Defeat came truly suddenly. I first learned of it when I heard the Emperor’s Jewel Voice broadcast. At
the Provincial Office, we listened to the broadcast together with our Korean colleagues.
We didn’t do anything special like gathering in the garden or somewhere, but listened at our own
desks. I remember feeling that everyone was listening individually to the broadcast, each in our own
way. It was like the sound flowed through our work space, and it was difficult to make out very clearly.
Even so, when I heard the Emperor say “suffer what is insufferable,” I knew that we had lost the war.
At the Provincial Office, no one knew ahead of time about the defeat. I don’t have any particularmemor y of the reaction of the Koreans in the Provincial Office at that time. I suppose I musthave spoken to them about the defeat, but I have no recollection about what I said. I don’t think I
had any conversation that was so impressive that I would have remembered. I think I was simply
overwhelmed by the idea that since Japan had lost, I would have to go back to Japan. I think it was all
I could do just to react to what was happening around me.
51

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

The day after we listened to the Jewel Voice broadcast, we went back to the office. Not that there
was any work to do. I did not do any proper work as I would normally have.
Since I expected that the necessary documents for the work I had been doing up to that point
would continue to be used, I handed them over to the Korean colleagues I had been working with.
Although we say they took over our work, since we had normally been working together anyway, thatkind of handoff wasn’t really particularly necessary. Everyone was already familiar with the kind ofwork I had been doing.
I tidied up the area around my desk, and because I had no further need for anything more, I
went home without touching anything else. Since we were not in any way at war with Korea, I neverdiscriminated against Korea. We had always acted according to the spirit of Japan and Korea as asingle body (naisen ittai), and we hadn’t done anything that we should feel the least bit ashamed of.
We had simply worked in the spirit of the idea that Koreans and Japanese could come together,working as hard as we could. None of the documents at the Kangwon Provincial Office were suchthat they would have caused problems if they had been made public. The Government-General had
exercised good governance.

Scattered Rioting
One night, the gates of my private residence in Shunsen (Chuncheon) were smashed to pieces.
Hedges were also damaged. Sensing the danger, Japanese compatriots gathered to spend the nights
together. However, nobody was injured, and I never heard anything about people being harmed. Nor
was any property stolen.
Since Shunsen was the seat of the Provincial Office, it had a large Korean population, and I think
there were also about a thousand Japanese, but I have no idea how many Koreans roamed the streetsat night smashing gates.
Speaking from my own experience, given that I was surrounded by Koreans, I feel that the numberof people who were been behind such violence must have been overwhelmingly small. It was just a
few Koreans running amok; the vast majority of their compatriots had no part in such malice. Thatsaid, this is an anecdote about where I was based in southern Korea, and I don’t know how things
were in the north.
Although I didn’t see any rioting after the end of the war, it’s true that when we left, we were forced
to leave behind all of the property we had in Korea. As soon as we learned of the defeat, the Japanese
gradually started to repatriate back to Japan.

An Overnight Reversal in Positions
Japanese and Koreans got on well together until the very eve of the end of the war. When I wonder
why the Koreans suddenly changed their attitudes overnight once the war ended, I suppose it musthave been because of a desire for independence that the Koreans had harbored.
Although Korea was not at war with Japan, in the course of a single evening, with Japan’s defeat,Koreans started to feel like “Korea has beaten Japan!” or “Now we are equal to Japan!”
Korea had until that point been annexed by Japan, and its citizens had felt that “With this, Korea
has also become a global power along with Japan.” Japan now had been laid low by its defeat in thewar. Rather than a Korean backlash against Japan, I feel that the Koreans had rapidly changed theirmindset based on a sense that “we mustn’t associate ourselves with Japan now that it’s lost the war,”based on their traditional principle of “loving and admiring the great and powerful (sadaejuui).”
I suppose they felt that the only way for them to survive was for Korea to become independent anddemonstrate its ability to succeed.

52

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Japanese Pride on the Line
Two or three days after the Jewel Voice broadcast, I called on the office of the personnel director after
hearing that some Japanese were quietly fleeing to Japan one or two at a time
I said to him:
Director! Japan has up until now been one of the world’s great powers, and we’ve been proud
to say that the Japanese are a world-class people. Even if we have fallen two or three ranks,
now that we have lost the war, are we Japanese not still among the greatest peoples of theworld? I don’t want to look like we’re skulking away, fleeing for home. There are currently
thought to be a thousand Japanese here in Shunsen. Why don’t we bring all the Japanese
together in one spot for an orderly repatriation, doing it in a way that the Koreans will observeand say to themselves, ‘Ah, yes. That’s the Japanese way… That’s a fine way to organize arepatriation.
At this, the personnel director said to me, “So, will you do that for us?”
Saying that I would if he let me, I took on the project, and quickly drew up a list of about ten namesof mid-ranking officials at the Provincial Office I thought would prove useful. I asked the personnel
director for a document that officially delegated me with the duty of repatriating Japanese residents inShunsen. I then gathered together the employees I had chosen, and said to them:
You men are to split up and visit the houses of Japanese in the city one by one. Please letpeople know that since we will be arranging for a special train to come in a few days, they will
have until then to organize their possessions for repatriation. Ask them to wait until we know
the day when the repatriation train will arrive. Please convey to them that people will not be
repatriated to Japan one by one, but rather all together. I am on my way to Keijō to make thenecessary arrangements.
With those words, I made my way to the railway headquarters in Keijō alone, without regard formy own safety.
Without any preliminary negotiations whatsoever, I was able to arrange for a single train to be sent
to Shunsen.
While riding back on the returning train, midway through my journey, two men dressed like police
officers boarded the car, calling out, “Ilbonsalam-ieobs-eoyo? Ilbonsalam-ieobs-eoyo? (Are there any
Japanese here? Are there any Japanese here?)” Until they reached my seat, there was not one person
who identified themselves as Japanese. This was owing to their fear that they might be forcibly
removed were they to do so.
When they reached me, I said, “I’m Japanese,” whereupon they asked me, “What is your purposeon this train?” I answered, “I went to Keijō to arrange for a special train for the repatriation of Japanesein Shunsen,” and they questioned me further, asking me, “And how did that turn out?” I told them,“I am happy to report that I was able to arrange for a special train to be sent, and the schedule wasconfirmed.” They acknowledged my answer and the encounter ended without any further problems.
I found that the atmosphere on the train instantly relaxed. At that point, another person who had
remained silent when the police officers had first passed piped up, saying “I’m Japanese too!”
The police officers turned back to the person and gave a stern warning, asking, “Why didn’t you
tell us earlier?” but this encounter too ended without incident.
After I returned to the Provincial Office and gave my report to the personnel director, I called
53

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

together the staff I mentioned earlier and made arrangements for them to notify all of the city’s
Japanese residents about the plan.
At last, the day of departure arrived. Since I was obliged to help other people on a variety ofmatters, I carried only a simple bag, and my wife carried our child in a wrap on her front whileshouldering a rucksack, while the large packs that I should have been carrying were seen to by Mr.
Lee, who was our servant.
It was normal for people to receive help from those like Mr. Lee, who had up to that point worked
for us. Then when I was about to board the train, my wife said to me “Dear, something terrible has
happened! All of the luggage we left with Mr. Lee has been taken!”Thinking that we would never get our things back if I spoke to a low-ranking person, I went to thestation chief’s office with the idea of negotiating with the man at the top.
I found a man wearing an armband that read “MG” and dressed in leather boots and a fineuniform. When I started negotiating and explained our situation to this man in the attempt to have ourbags returned, he said to me “Shouldn’t you have been carrying your bags yourself?” I explained that
I hadn’t been able to carry the bags since I had been busy making various arrangements, whereupon
he told me to accompany him to a room where the bags had been piled in a heap. As he ordered me
to “take them and go,” I tried to pull all of the bags onto my back.
But when the bags proved too heavy and I stumbled, he would lend me a hand from behind to
steady me on my feet, a gesture for which I was thankful.
Afterwards, when we arrived in Keijō, we went to a relocation camp where we stayed for about amonth. We were then packed into freight cars, and after a night standing up in the cars along the way,
we arrived in Pusan (Busan).
At that point we noticed that the whites and blacks of our newborn son’s eyes seemed to bereversing themselves. Since I was carrying a medical text, the so-called Red Book (Katei ni okeru
jissaiteki kango no hiketsu [Secrets of practical household nursing], by Tsukuda Takichi, first edition
1925), I consulted it to find that his condition was due to indigestion, and that while it was written thatmost victims could not be saved, there were cases of people recovering after being made to drink abroth prepared by boiling a mixture of oriental geranium (Geranium thunbergii) and coffee senna(Senna occidentalis).
After running madly around the streets of Pusan looking for these ingredients to no avail, I went tothe city’s suburbs, where I was finally able to buy them in a small apothecary’s shop.
We boiled them and made the child drink the mixture. He was miraculously saved.
After another month staying at the relocation camp in Pusan, we were able to board therepatriation vessel. Then, as we were standing in line, American soldiers and Koreans came around,and our wristwatches were taken, as were all of the materials that I had been brought for writing abook about Mount Kumgang when I returned to Japan. By sheer chance, I was able to bring backonly the drawing of the Mount Kumgang telephone wire installation because it was overlooked by theAmerican soldiers.

Concerns about Japan’s Future at the Time of Repatriation
I went back to Japan three or four times during the twelve years I was in Korea. The first time was for
my inspection when I was drafted into the military, the second time was when my mother was ill, andthe third time was when my mother passed away.
Aboard the repatriation vessel, I thought to myself that, “If Japan can’t get back on its feet within
ten years, it will likely not recover for decades, perhaps even a century or more.”That thought was something that simply came to me. Although eighty years have passed since54

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Japan’s defeat, I want to ask if Japan can now be called an independent country.

The “Senzaki Bureau of Repatriate Welfare” at thePort of Senzaki, Yamaguchi Prefecture
When I returned to Japan and began looking for another job, I wrote a letter to Takeuchi Shunpei,
who had served as a police chief in Korea. Takeuchi and I had both studied under the same school
principal. Takeuchi had let me stay at his house for a week when I first went to Shunsen in Korea
until my lodgings had been arranged. Takeuchi arranged for me to be hired at the Senzaki Bureau of
Repatriate Welfare at the Port of Senzaki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where he was serving as bureau
chief.
Takeuchi was an incredibly smart fellow, for he had passed the Higher Civil Service Examination
and National Bar Examination at the same time. In those days, the Higher Civil Service Examination
was regarded as the most difficult examination, followed by the National Bar Examination.
At the “Welfare Bureau” (engokyoku), we supported people who were returning to Japan, and I wasplaced in charge of the Rations Department. We prepared food for people who had arrived without
having had anything to eat or drink.
The people who came to Senzaki from the Korean Peninsula were mostly from southern Korea,
northern China, and Manchuria.
While I heard a variety of stories at the Welfare Bureau, those that left the strongest impression
were about the cruelty of the Russians and the hardships experienced by people returning from
Manchuria and northern Korea. I heard many stories of Japanese women who blackened their faces
with ink when they were fleeing, but even so there were many women who ended up being raped by
Russians.
As soon as the war was over, stories about the reputation of Russians for carrying out such evilbegan circulating. I heard that many Japanese women had havoc wreaked on them.
I remember how people coming back from northern Korea and Manchuria were truly miserable,
and were dressed in terrible clothes.
At the Senzaki Welfare Bureau alone, 410,000 repatriates arrived in a single year. Nationwide, there
were a considerable number of people being repatriated.

55

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Alexander Turnbull Library Collections, Wellington, New Zealand,
Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at theGovernment-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Returnees at the Senzaki Bureau of Repatriate Welfare
Many of those who returned from mainland China and northern Korea had experienced severe
hardship. At the Senzaki Bureau of Repatriate Welfare (Senzaki hikiage engokyoku), I was placedin charge of supplying food. We prepared food for people who had arrived without having had
anything to eat or drink (as related by Nishikawa).

The Chinese
The Chinese did not have such a bad reputation. They never had a terrible reputation like theRussians. In southern China, I heard that Chiang Kai-shek said that we should “repay grudges with
virtue.”Chiang Kai-shek was a great man. Since he had studied and worked in Japan, I think he understood
the Japanese. I heard he said that the Japanese who had lost the war should be allowed to return tohome without being subject to any mischief. While I realize that Chiang Kai-shek was a man of varied
reputation, I think he was a splendid figure. I feel that Chiang Kai-shek’s achievements in connection
with the repatriation of the Japanese were considerable.
Chiang Kai-shek went to Taiwan after fighting and losing to Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. The
Chinese people I am comparing with the Russians were those who were allied with Chiang Kai-shek’s
Kuomintang Party, and were different from the Chinese people of today. After the Communist Party
began running China, I feel the country has become much worse. I still think that the Chinese whoallied with Chiang Kai-shek were a better sort of people.
Speaking of Manchuria, I want to tell you this story that I heard about an acquaintance of one of
my classmates. Since his two sons had died strange deaths after the war, the man became worriedand consulted a fortune teller. When he did so, the fortune teller said to him, “It may be that you are
extremely lacking in filial piety.” Hearing this, the blood drained from the man’s face, and he began toweep. “The fact is,” he said, “during our repatriation, my father and mother asked me to bring themhome with me, but I had my hands full with my own wife and children, and so left my parents behind.”

56

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

When they were being repatriated from Manchuria, it seems that many people were forced to leave
their parents and children behind.

Source: Alexander Turnbull Library Collections, Wellington, New Zealand,
Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at theGovernment-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Returnees from Mainland China at the Senzaki Bureau of Repatriate Welfare
More than 410,000 Japanese returning home were processed at Senzaki alone. Senzaki wasalso used as a port of departure for foreign nationals living in Japan who were returning to theirhomes in Korea and Taiwan. (Editors)

A Fine School Principal
Sometime around September 1946, after the Senzaki Bureau of Repatriate Welfare had been closed,
I got in touch with Komorita Matahei, my old school principal from my hometown, to ask his advice
about finding new employment. Principal Komorita was the person who had sent me the telegram
informing me of the position that had been secured for me with the Government-General when I wasa student at the forestry school (Chapter 1).
While it seemed that I might be able to find work in Nara thanks to connections I had made at the
Welfare Bureau, I was inclined to return to my native area in Wakayama, so I had decided to seek theadvice of my old principal. When I did so, he was good enough to contact the personnel department at
the Wakayama Prefectural Government, where a job for me was soon decided.
From what I saw, those who were repatriated to Japan had developed a kind of determination.
Many of them had undergone unimaginable hardship. Many of these people went on to become
leading figures at the prefectural government.
The Nankai earthquake of 1946 struck when I was working at the Bureau of Repatriate Welfare.
Senzaki was also quite shaken by the tremors.
In the end, I was indebted to my school principal at two important decision points in my life—firstwhen I went to Korea at the age of eighteen, and then again when I returned to my hometown seeking
another job at the age of thirty after the end of the war.
57

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

When I graduated from Principal Komorita’s school, he told me that “when your get your firstmonthly salary, be sure to send a bit to your parents, even if it is only a single yen.”
True to his words, from my first monthly salary (of 40 yen and 5 sen) I sent five yen to my parents
and another three to the principal as a present to my alma mater. When I did so, he said to me, “I amgenuinely happy. Having thought about how to use it most effectively, I’ve decided to use it to build ahōanden for the school (a small structure that held photographs of the Emperor and Empress and a
copy of the Imperial Rescript on Education), and will write your name at the top of the list of donors.”
When I later visited, though others had donated larger amounts of ten or even a hundred yen,
he really had written my name at the top. I was very happy about that. He was a fine principal, and awonderful person.

58

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 4:
Korean volunteer soldiers
The recruitment of the first wave of Korean volunteer soldiers began in 1938.
A total of just under 3,000 applicants came forward, more than seven times the quota. As a result, thequota was increased so that 480 volunteers were recruited.
The number of volunteers continued to increase year after year, and in 1943 as many as 300,000 applicants
came forward, approximately fifty-seven times the quota of 5,300 recruits.
That year also saw the recruitment of officer candidates and sailors.
One characteristic of the Japanese military was that it became a mixture of Japanese and Korean troops.
As a result, it came to pass that native Japanese soldiers were placed under the command of Korean
officers.
In the army, this naturally meant that the Korean officers would sometimes yell at and strike their
Japanese subordinates and make them polish their boots.
On the other hand, in the United States during the Second World War, units of white servicemen andblack ser vicemen were kept completely apart. The ver y idea of white soldiers being placed under thecommand of a black officer was inconceivable.
In this column, we will relate the experiences of Choi Kyung-nok, a soldier who volunteered in Korea in1941.
After World War II, he became the South Korean government’s ambassador to Japan. He contributed thefollowing memories of his mentor to a work called Haku’un yūyū (Boundless White Clouds) that was writtenby the next of kin of Colonel Ono Takeo of the 20th Army Division.
Chief of Staff Ono was like a father to me, as well as someone who saved my life. The Chief of Staff said
to me, “The people of Japan are doing a great disservice to the Korean people. It troubles me. Japanand Korea must join hands in building a great nation in a spirit of universal brotherhood (isshi dōshin).
This is not a time for mutual squabbling.”
In response, I said to him, “You say universal brotherhood, but given the respective circumstances
arising from our mutual histories and customs, surely universal brotherhood is beyond our reach.
Though I do think we should work together.”
To which the Chief of Staff told me, “You’re young, but a level-headed sort. You have qualities thatwill make you a future leader of the Korean people,” thereby teaching me to live for the grand causeof Japan and Korea, without being distracted by minor causes such as the national independence
movement.
Choi later enrolled in the Japanese Army Academy, and went on to fight in the Battle of Finschhafen in
New Guinea.
Although Choi had command of nineteen soldiers, the only survivors were Choi, who sustained heavy
injuries after being hit by eight bullets, and Private First Class Idei, who was hit in the abdomen. Idei
wrapped his own injured stomach with his senninbari sash (a strip of cloth embroidered with “one thousand
stitches” carried as a protective amulet by Japanese soldiers) and walked out carrying the severely injured
Choi, reportedly arriving at a base three days later. Private First Class Idei died soon thereafter. Chief ofStaff Ono, who discovered Choi in critical condition, said “If we let this man die, it would be an affront to theEmperor,” and ordered that Choi be given special medical treatment.
After the war, Choi Kyung-nok reportedly refused to be swayed by public opinion in South Korea, sayingthat “It is because of my love for South Korea that I am fond of Japan.”And so, acting on the words spoken by the Chief of Staff, he worked for the great cause of JapaneseKorean relations.

59

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 5:
Medical Care; Resources and Agriculture
Records survive attesting how the Government-General of Korea expanded medical care to safeguard thelives of the Korean people. The contemporary situation was reported as follows in the 1935 edition of the
Chōsen sōtokufu shisei nenpō (Annual report on the administration of the Government-General of Korea).
Sanitar y conditions in Korea are ver y poor. Few Korean doctors possess modern academic skills,
patients harken first to priestesses and fortune tellers, and there is a custom of avoiding medical
treatment.
Public sanitation facilities are extremely ill-equipped, what is called drinking water is for the mostpart unfit for consumption, and all manner of infectious diseases are prevalent. Lung distoma andancylostomiasis (hookworm) in particular have spread across the country because people have noknowledge about how they might be held in check. What could be viewed as medical facilities arelimited to those staffed by no more than a handful of Japanese physicians and foreign missionar ydoctors engaged in medical treatment in Keijō and a few other areas.
At the time of the Annexation, the Japanese Resident-General of Korea, taking the improvement ofhygiene as a matter of urgent priority, established the Daehan Hospital (Daikan iin in Japanese, Daehan
uiwon in Korean) and set up provincial charity clinics (jahye uiwon) throughout the country. Daehan Hospitalwould later become the Keijō Imperial University Hospital, a center of medical learning in Korea.
The central government’s control over provincial charity hospitals was transferred and came underlocal finances in 1925, when they came to be known as provincial hospitals. The training of physicians
began in 1926 with the government’s founding of the Keijō Imperial University School of Medicine and theestablishment of a vocational college.
In addition, a por tion of the bonds intended to promote entrepreneurship were devoted to theestablishment of waterworks in major cities.
Regarding measures to control infectious diseases as a paramount challenge, the Government-Generalstrengthened measures to prepare for epidemics of cholera arriving from ports and plague spreading from
Manchuria. Additionally, the vaccination of 1.2 million people against smallpox carried out in 1910 proved to
be a landmark undertaking.
Korea was not well endowed with underground resources, with most of its major gold-bearing veinshaving already been mined out by the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain, Germany, andFrance in the Joseon period.
Huge investments of capital are necessary for resource extraction. The outbreak of the Second SinoJapanese War spurred demand for gold, iron, and coal, but while Korea’s underground resources attracted
some attention, these would have been inaccessible without the subsidies provided by the Japanese
government.
The lives of farmers during the Joseon period had been miserable, with accounts of starvation surviving
in many records. The Tragedy of Korea, an account by F. A. Mackenzie, a foreign visitor to Joseon Korea, has
the following passage:“Why do I not grow bigger crops and cultivate more fields?” a Korean farmer once asked me. “Whyshould I? Bigger crops means greater extortion from the governor.”
Ugaki Kazushige, Korea’s sixth Governor-General, promoted a “rural revitalization campaign,” and is said
to have personally visited rural villages around the country to provide encouragement. In 1905, Korea’s rice
harvest amounted to nine to per tan (equivalent to approximately 18.8 bushels per acre), just over half ofJapan’s ratio of one koku and six to per tan (approximately 33.43 bushels per acre).
Japan brought improvements to Korea’s hospitals and hygiene, and provided guidance to the country’s
60

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

agricultural, fishing, and forestry industries. It was the Japanese who saved Koreans from the desperateconditions prior to Japanese rule.
Present-day South Korea was established on a foundation that was largely built under Japanese rule.

61

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Chapter 5

Japanese Governance and the Future ofJapanese-Korean Relations
Japan Exercised Commendable Governance
Had I not been a civil servant serving as a Director of Internal Affairs in the Government-General of
Korea, I would not have been able to talk about the so-called “military comfort women.” Currently, I
doubt there is anyone who worked for the executive branch of the government like me who would be
able to make such affirmations. I expect that even those who were similarly repatriated from Korea
would have no knowledge of government or military affairs, since they were in the private sector.
Having worked for twelve years in Korea, what comes to mind now is that the Japanese exercised amodel and commendable form of governance in their administration of Korea. I do not feel that there
was any aspect that would merit condemnation or complaint.
In the areas of production increases, industry, education, and hygiene, the Japanese gave it their
all and worked together with the Korean people, pouring out their energy for the sake of Korea. And
the Japanese did so without discrimination. Eliminating discrimination was in fact one of the major
policies of the Government-General. There was nothing like the discrimination against Black people
as in the USA. I doubt there is another country anywhere that has exercised such commendable
administration.
While the effect of this administration can still be seen in Taiwan, I wonder why Korea has become
so uniformly anti-Japanese. Things have changed dramatically for the worse since Syngman Rhee(the first President of South Korea) drew international boundaries to the east of the Liancourt Rocks(Takeshima in Japanese, Dokdo in Korean).
I feel that Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-sung (the founder of North Korea) used anti-Japanesesentiment after the war as a theme to unite their nations. They stoked hatred of Japan to distract
attention from criticisms of their own rule. Compounding this, journalistic organizations in Japan,
especially the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, have done nothing but support their side, bringing us to thepresent state of affairs.
I feel that the so-called comfort women issue achieved such popularity as the result of a batch oflies written by an Asahi Shimbun journalist. That newspaper changed completely before and after thewar. The prewar Asahi Shimbun was good for the country, unlike today. From the outset, there wasnever any comfort women issue in Korea. That’s why neither Koreans nor Japanese spoke of suchthings after the war.
If anyone had mentioned anything like military comfort women in those days like people do today, it
would have been immediately been recognized as a lie because many people would have been aroundin both Japan and South Korea who knew the details of the situation at the time. This is somethingthat would certainly have been known by people in South Korea who were there at the same time I
was. Even the phrase “military comfort women” (jūgun ianfu) is something that didn’t originally exist.
The term “military (service)” (jūgun) has a nice ring to it, in a certain sense. We speak of “militaryjournalists,” “military photographers,” and “military nurses,” but at the time, there was nothing likethe phrase “military comfort women.”
I am unaware of any instance of Japanese military personnel transporting prostitutes to the war’s
southern fronts. But I wonder if the military might have told Korean procurers of women that there
was a shortage of prostitutes, which prompted those procurers to round up women. However, I do not
62

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

believe that the military was ever directly involved in abducting and forcibly transporting women.
Even though the father of President Park Geun-hye, former president Park Chung-hee, had proJapan sympathies, things are now the complete opposite. Park Geun-hye’s anti-Japanese foreign
policies seem to play well to public opinion in Korea, especially when speaking with South Korea’s
mass media. But the feelings about Japan held by typical Koreans whom I knew were different. I only
have good memories about them.
I think Japan’s achievements in its governance of Korea and Taiwan set rare examples for the restof the world.
Even though other countries all exploited their colonies and caused residents to suffer, Japan
regarded people in both Korea and Taiwan as no different than Japanese. We worked together as hard
as we could to achieve mutual happiness. Japan was not seeking to be an exploiter. I would like to ask
if such cases existed anywhere else in the world.
For both rice and coal, I do think there was a desire to have Korean products sent to Japan.
However, there was no sense of seeking to torment or exploit the Korean people.
I got a glance of the Governor-General of Korea only once. His position was even more augustthan that held by the Prime Minister today. I never heard any talk about any of the Governor-Generals
imposing unjust rule. I wonder why South Korea seems so unable to understand the legacy ofJapanese rule, which was just like Japan’s rule of Taiwan.

Infrastructure Development
The development of infrastructure was also done solely for the sake of Korea. The development work
was in fact a major financial burden for Japan. Huge sums of money and labor were invested, far morethan would be required to develop infrastructure for the sake of “exploitation.” The Suiho Dam (nowthe Sup’ung Dam) and nitrogen works in Hungnam were colossal projects, among the largest of theirkind in the world.
As it was a place of memories for me, I will repeat myself. Mount Kumgang was an enchanting
place for me. With its endless diversity of the rock formations and the autumn colors in September
and early October, it was truly astonishing. The autumn colors would shine a red glow on your face.
The charms of Mount Kumgang left me spellbound. I loved that mountain.
If we had been there for the purpose of exploitation, I would not have felt any need to go to such
effort to place telephone cables across Mount Kumgang. I was proud of my work.
If I had not been transferred and had stayed longer with the Forestry Section, I might have beenable to work on the protection of forests in Pyeongchang, another scenic area that resembled Mount
Kumgang. Pyeongchang is to be the site of a forthcoming Winter Olympics. Although I have heardthat Pyeongchang was an extremely beautiful place, I now regret the fact that I never had the chance
to visit it.

The Absence of Aerial Bombing in Korea
Korea did not experience air raids during World War II, and I think this absence of aerial attacks
played a major role in its postwar recovery. I have heard that 100,000 people died in Tokyo in an air
raid in a single night. The positions from which Japan and Korea started from after World War II werecompletely different.
In Korea, all of the infrastructure put in place by the Government-General of Korea, including
buildings and railroads, survived, whereas in Japan, major cities were left in ruins by aerial bombing.
Then there were the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, Japan made economic
assistance payments (which amount effectively to postwar reparations) to Korea, even though it had
63

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

never been at war with the country.
When we Japanese were repatriated back to Japan, each person was only allowed to bring home athousand yen. The only luggage you were permitted was what you could carry yourself. Any savings
you had at the time was left behind in Korea. What ever became of the savings that the Japanese left
behind? South Korea simply claimed the entire astronomical sum for itself.
When I tried to send funds to Japan at the post office shortly before the end of the war, my request
was refused. They would not process my request, saying that they could not guarantee deliver y
because the Kanpu Ferr y traveling between Shimonoseki and Pusan might be sunk by US navy
submarines.

Source: Asahi Shimbun morning edition for March 19, 1945

The Shōwa Emperor Inspects Stricken Areas
The Shōwa Emperor walks through the scorched ruins of Tokyo on March 18, 1945 after thebombing of Tokyo on March 10. The photo is of the pathway to Tomioka Hachimangu Shrine.
(Editors)

Japan Is Not an Independent Country
Before the war, I remember that Chinese people who came to my hometown in Japan werediscriminated against and called names like chankoro. This was shortly after the First Sino-JapaneseWar, so it couldn’t be helped, I suppose.
But with the Koreans, everyone called them “Chōsen-san” (“san” is an honorific used after person’sname). Although there was a large Korean community in Osaka, there were not so many Koreans inWakayama. Koreans sometimes even came to my hometown, but people did not disparage them.
This was because Japan and Korea had never been at war.
What I want to say is that the so-called military comfort women did not exist. This concept is anarmchair theory that was conjured up after the war.
And when I watch Japan’s politicians, it just makes me angr y. It is a terrible shame that theJapanese men of today have been so stripped of determination and resolve.
Then as now, there were many kinds of people among the Japanese. But I would like people to stop
disparaging our Japanese forefathers who lived their lives for the good of Korea.
64

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

In particular, I want Japanese politicians to show some resolve. They apologize even for things that
do not merit an apology, and I feel that they should project a stronger presence.
I want Japan’s constitution to be completely revised. Rather than talking about details such as
Article 9 or the preamble, I would like for the whole document to be amended. I believe that it isbecause of this constitution that the Japanese have become such a dispirited people.
I would like to say the following to the President of the USA:The Japanese strongly dislike the practice of spreading slander about their neighbors to theoutside world. But the President of South Korea does nothing but speak slanderously about
Japan to other countries, and this makes Japanese feel unpleasant. Would you have us getalong with such a country? Would Americans get along with a neighboring country if they
were subjected to such abuse?
If asked about the comfort women, I would ask:
Didn’t American soldiers also commit rape in Japan? We can cite numerous cases and also
show proof. Japanese military regulations were severe, to the point that even soldiers in thefield did not commit bad deeds. The USA and South Korea, did they not commit atrocities inVietnam?
Japan does not say such things in diplomatic settings. But if the USA were to be addressed insuch a manner by Japan, would it not make you angry?
I think we should this with our head held high.
We are always stooping to flattery based on our guesses of how people would react and what theywould say next. I find this attitude really undignified.
Because the current constitution was created under the US occupation, Japan today no longer
has the ability to say anything. Even Germany, another defeated country, has already revised its
constitution more than ten times. Living under a constitution written by occupation forces, I really feelthat Japan cannot truly be called an independent country.
It is necessary that we establish an alliance with the USA in the true sense of the word. To continue
in a relationship where there is a senior member and junior member is not a true alliance. Since I
believe that it is our constitution that prevents us from establishing a strong presence, I would first of
all like the constitution to be revised.
There is too much talk about things that differ from the facts. Though I repeat myself over andover again, you need to understand that the expression “military comfort women” did not exist in thefirst place and was not even discussed after the war.

Discrimination Was Inexcusable
What strikes me as curious is that discrimination does exist in Japan, in the form of burakumin (outcast
group of people at the bottom of the Japanese social order) assimilation issues that are known as
the dōwa mondai. This strikes me as absolutely disgraceful. Why should people despise their fellow
Japanese by saying that they “once lived in a buraku hamlet” or “practiced a lowly occupation”? Why
discriminate on that basis, I wonder?
Long ago, similar issues concerning burakumin existed near my home in Wakayama. Perhaps they
still do. Discriminatory expressions about such people still exist.
After the end of the war, I was involved in promoting the merger of municipalities when I served
as the director of a regional government office. Among those opposed to one merger, it seems that65

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

there were some people who disliked that a burakumin settlement was located in one of the areas thatwould be amalgamated into the new municipality.
Since they would be rebuked for voicing such opinions, they kept silent. As a result, things went
more poorly than they should have, and it was difficult to see the mergers to completion. There are anumber of examples of mergers of towns and villages failing for this reason.
Why do we discriminate against people even though they are Japanese?
Though in Korea we worked so hard to instill the idea of “Japan and Korea as One Body” (naisen
ittai), that Koreans and Japanese were together, I feel that it is a complete disgrace that Japanesediscriminate against their compatriots over something like their background in a buraku settlement.

Sadaejuui: “Love and Admiration for the Great and Powerful”
Korean schools, as in Japan, obser ved the principles of “Clarity of the National Polity” (kokutaimeichō), “Japan and Korea as One Body” (naisen ittai), and “Perseverance and Discipline” (ninku
tanren). Even though we had been told that we “must become strong subjects” (tsuyoku mitami tonaru beshi) when I was an elementary school student, the people of today’s Japan Teachers’ Union
simply say that their students “should be nice people” (yasashii hito ni nare). If you say “be strong,”
you will be labelled right-wing, or a militarist. I think that’s strange. While a strong person can become
kind, these people do not understand that a weak person cannot become kind.
Koreans, as individuals, are very good people. I studied together with them at the Civil Servant
Training Center and they were truly intelligent when it came to liberal arts subjects. Koreans areprone to expressing themselves with passion. In terms of their national temperament, it would bebetter for them to change their inclination toward what they call sadaejuui (literally “showing love andadmiration to the great and powerful”).
Historically, Korea was heavily influenced by China, and I feel sorry for Koreans for having topreserve their country with such a powerful nation as a neighbor. The Greater East Asia War was also
followed by the Korean War, and it pains me to think of Korea’s division.
However, the principle of sadaejūi is a mindset that tries to secure self-protection by pandering todominant powers and trends without adhering to any of one’s own beliefs. This must change.

Friendship between Japan and South Korea: A Second Home
The current President of South Korea seems to bear a degree of malice that exceeds what can be
explained by the legacy of the war with Japan. People are arguing about things that did not evenhappen. Anti-Japanese education is drilled into the heads of young South Koreans from an early age.
They are taught that “the Japanese came to our country and did nothing but cause trouble.”
I cannot think this to be a good thing for either Japan or South Korea.
Korea is like a second home for me.
Even now, I can sing the well-known song “Arirang.”
I hope that Japan and Korea will be able to join forces and work hard together as fellow Asian
nations. And I hope that Taiwan, Korea, and Japan will be able to continue striving for success, as in
the past.
This once was possible, and it is my wish that it may yet be possible again. I speak as someone
with firsthand experience.
To conclude, in February 2013, I wrote a letter to Prime Minister Abe Shinzō,1 and I would bepleased to share it here with my readers.
166

Abe announced his resignation as prime minister in August 2020.
The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Letter to Prime Minister Abe
February 21, 2013
Dear Prime Minister Abe,
Please forgive the nerve of an obscure old man sending a letter to a Prime Minister who is
working so diligently day and night on the affairs of our nation.
There is something I would like to say while I am still alive. It is something that concerns theso-called the military comfort women.
To come right to the point, there is absolutely no way that Japanese military officers and civil
servants were involved in forcibly rounding up women for service as military comfort women, as
has been claimed by Korea (North and South Korea) and others. I can make such an assertion aresult of my experience as a Director of Internal Affairs for the counties of Yeongwol and Wonju in
the Korean province of Kangwon. In this letter, I would like to describe the situation as it existed
at that time. I went to Korea in 1933, serving in a position at the Kangwon Provincial Office, where
I worked until I was repatriated after Japan’s wartime defeat. During that time, I was temporarily
called up for military service for a year.
The governance of Korea was carried out by the Government-General via provincial offices, byprovincial offices via county offices, and then enforced by the county offices through various levelsof municipalities known as bu, eup, and myeon (corresponding to Japan’s cities, townships, andrural villages). (At the time, there were no bu in Kangwon Province, only eup and myeon).
Counties were led by county magistrates known as gunsu, mostly Korean, who had authority overthe Internal Affairs Section and Industrial Promotion Section. Directors of Internal Affairs were
mostly Japanese, often highly experienced men in their forties. These officials managed personnel
and oversaw other general office matters; they wielded the real power at the county offices.
The responsibilities of the Director of Internal Af fairs included militar y af fairs and thesuper vision and guidance of municipalities. Because Koreans were exempt from militar yconscription, military affairs were mainly about reservists (zaigō gunjin) who were on a list offormer servicemen.
While young Korean men were subject to labor conscription, the Government-General allocateda set number of required laborers to each province. These quotas would then be allocated by theprovinces to county offices, and from the county offices to the municipalities. Recruited youths
would be sent to Pusan (Busan) and placed under the charge of officials of the GovernmentGeneral.
No similar system existed at all for Korean women. If the army had intended to recruit comfort
women, the only way would have been for the Korean Military Headquarters to make a request to
the Government-General to enlist them using a system like the one I mentioned. But no such thing
ever took place.
The forcible recruitment and abduction of prostitutes was the practice of pimps, procurers, andtheir kind, and the Japanese military and government had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Many Japanese women practiced prostitution in places where the military was stationed, butwould people have called them military comfort women? It frustrates me to no end that people,
67

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

who unlike the Japanese, are without shame and are willing to do anything for money, have taken
advantage of the timidity that Japanese have felt in the wake of our wartime defeat to tell suchgroundless lies.
I expect that by now, most of the persons who knew the real situation of that time—officials
at the Government-General, at the provincial or county-level administrative offices, or military
officers—have passed away. While even some Japanese alive today, especially among thoseinclined to self-recrimination, claim the military and government were involved with the so-called
military comfort women, these people know nothing of the actual conditions before and during
the war in the taverns (sooljib) and brothels (galbojib) that could have been described as the hometerritory of Korean prostitutes. Indeed, I cannot but despair at such people, who play around with
their armchair theories in such a cavalier fashion.
Prime Minister Abe, there is nobody but you who can hopefully amend the Kōno Statement,
which has tarnished the dignity of our nation and will be a bitter legacy for our descendants. It is
my earnest and heartfelt request that you take this opportunity to issue a firm correction of theStatement, for the sake of a proud Japan. I offer my prayers for your good health, for the sake ofour nation.

With best regards,

Nishikawa Kiyoshi (age 97)
Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture

68

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 6:Japan’s Annexation of Korea; the Korean Imperial Family(The Yi Dynasty)
Before the Annexation, the Second Japan-Korea Treaty was signed in 1905. After Korea’s diplomatic
rights had been transferred to Japan, the Japanese Annexation of Korea (Japan-Korea Consolidation) wascompleted in 1910.
Critics of the Annexation have developed positions based on the “invalidity” and “failed consummation”
of Japan’s Annexation of Korea stemming from the absence of diplomatic rights on the part of Korea. Thesescholars have made appeals to the international community on the basis of what they believe to be theimposed nature of the treaty and its inadequacies.
In this regard, scholarly views were presented at the Third Conference of “A Reconsideration of theJapanese Annexation of Korea,” held in 2001 with support from South Korea.
Cambridge University Professor James Crawford, a specialist in international law, rejected the “invalidity”
and “failed consummation” of the annexation claimed by South Korea. In Crawford’s view, the question is
how the matter was viewed by the Western powers. Since Japan’s annexation of Korea received internationalrecognition, it cannot be considered to have been invalid, even if the proceedings were somehow defective
or flawed.
Crawford also pointed out that international law only applied between civilized countries and did not apply
to non-civilized countries.
Anthony Carty, then a professor at Derby University in the UK, rejected the South Korean claims, sayingthat during imperialism’s heyday, it was doubtful whether international law even existed at all.
Although the term “de facto compulsion” is used frequently in connection with the Annexation,agreements that are based on perfect equality of the signatories are impossible. The Annexation was basedon a formal treaty that was concluded with the consent of the Korean state.
Next, there is the claim that Japan robbed the ruling Yi Dynasty of Korea.
Following its annexation of Korea, Japan made a payment to the Yi Dynasty totalling 1.5 million yen, outof the approximately 19.17 million yen making up the expenditures for Korea in Japan’s annual budget for
1910. This was about eight percent of the total expenditures. Even afterwards, Japan paid between 1.5 and 1.8
million yen a year to the Yi Dynasty up to the end of the Second World War.
Japan expressed its utmost respect to Sunjong, the Emperor of the Great Korean Empire and the twentyseventh monarch of the Yi Dynasty, by referring to him as “His Majesty the former Emperor of Korea.”
The Crown Prince of the Yi Dynasty, Yi Un, married Princess Masako of Nashimoto, the eldest daughterof Japanese Prince Nashimoto Morimasa, in 1920. Princess Masako was said to have been a candidate to
marry the Shōwa Emperor.
Would someone who was in the running to marry the heir to the British throne stoop to marry a memberof a royal family of a colony?
After the end of the war, Yi Un and his wife were prevented from returning to Korea by Syngman Rhee,
the first President of the Republic of Korea. They shuttled between Japan and the United States, graduallyusing up their limited assets to eke out a meager living.
Yi Un collapsed from a cerebral infarction in 1960. He and his wife were finally allowed to return to South
Korea through the good offices of President Park Chung-hee following the resignation of Syngman Rhee in
1963. Yi Un passed away in 1970.
Although South Korea insists to the international community that their monarch was robbed by Japan, theSouth Koreans were the ones who showed discourtesy to their own former Crown Prince. Yi Un was treatedas a Japanese collaborator and was unable to return to his country. In other words, the South Koreans chosethe route that brought an end to the Yi Dynasty.

69

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

■ Column 7:
Aid from Japan to Korea
The stability of the situation in Korea was a serious matter for Japan because Japan faced a threat from
Russia, and Japan wanted Korea to modernize on its own. At the time, however, the near bankruptcy of the
Korean Empire made such a thing impossible in practice.
Japan therefore gave an enormous amount of support to Korea. We will present the facts of the situationfrom a contemporary report entitled The New Korea, by Alleyne Ireland.
In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Japan attempted to improve Korea’s fiscal situation by appointing
a Financial Advisor for Korea. Under the terms of the Third Japan-Korea Treaty in 1907, Japan placed the
Korean Empire under the protection of a Resident-General, who began carrying out a full-scale overhaul ofthe country’s internal affairs. Between 1907 and 1910, prior to Japan’s Annexation of Korea, approximately
104 million yen in aid was provided to the Korean Empire. This is the modern equivalent of about 18 trillion
yen.
At the time of the Annexation in 1910, an “Extraordinary Imperial Gift” of 30 million yen (equivalent toabout just over 5 trillion yen today) was granted by the Meiji Emperor to Korea. At the time, this massive
Imperial Gift was reputedly intended to offset debts of 26.51 million yen that had been accumulated by the
Korean Empire.
Even afterwards, the budget of the Government-General of Korea could never be covered by tax revenues
from Korea, which led annually to massive deficits. The Japanese government continued to cover this deficit
every year by providing subsidies from Japan’s domestic budget. In addition, Korean bonds were issued toraise funds for the budget from the (primarily Japanese) private sector. In 1911 and 1912, subsidies fromJapan and funds borrowed by issuing Korean bonds accounted for more than 40 percent of Korea’s budget.
Examples of large-scale private sector investment and development include the 66.38 million yen(equivalent to approximately 21.7 trillion yen today) invested in railway projects between 1900 and 1906, as
well as 270 million yen (approximately 10 trillion yen today) spent on the construction of the Suiho Dam (nowknown as the Sup’ung Dam) in 1937. The Suiho Dam began with financial support from Noguchi Shitagau,
the president of Nihon Chisso Hir yo Kabushiki Kaisha (Nichitsu, also known as Japan Nitrogenous
Fertilizer), a leading electrochemical company.
Examples of large factories and industrial complexes built in Korea by Japanese capital include those run
by Nippon Seitetsu (Japan Iron Manufacturing), Mitsui Kōzan (Mitsui Mining), Mitsubishi Kōgyo (Mitsubishi
Mining), Sumitomo Kōgyo (Sumitomo Mining), Nihon Kōygo, Chōsen Kinkō, Seiwa Kōgyo, Chōsen
Muentan (Joseon Anthracite), Nissen Kōgyo, Ōji Seishi (Ōji Paper), Chōsen Onoda Cement, Chōsen Cement
under the auspices of Ube Kōsan (Ube Industries), Chōsen Beer under Dai Nippon Beer (Dai Nippon
Brewer y), Shōwa Kirin Beer under Kirin Beer (Kirin Brewer y), Keijō Boseki (Keijō Cotton Spinning),
Chōsen Menka, Tōyō Menka, Tōyō Bōseki (Tōyō Cotton Spinning), Kanegafuchi Bōseki (Kanegafuchi
Spinning/Kanebō), Dai Nippon Bōseki (Dai Nippon Cotton Spinning), Chōsen Orimono under Itōchū Corp.,
Taishō Orimono, Chōsen Boseki, Tōyō Rayon, Nippon Seifun (Nippon Flour Mills), Nisshin Seifun (Nisshin
Flour Milling), Chōsen Chisso Hiryō, and Chōsen Seihyō. Employment was created by the constructionof these factories, and Korea’s economy grew wealthy by sending products to Japan. All of these factories
remained on the Korean peninsula after World War II.
The cumulative amount of assistance provided by Japan over its thirty-six years of Korean rule came
to about 2.789 billion yen—a colossal amount, equivalent to approximately 63 trillion yen today. Moreover,
Koreans were exempt from paying income tax during the first ten years of the Annexation. Their portion was
shouldered instead by the heavy tax burden placed on Japanese residents living in the Korean Peninsula.

70

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Editorial Supplement:

A Histor y of
Korea and the Government-General of Korea
Photos

Source: Chōsenkoku shinkei (True scenes from Korea) (Hayashi Buichi, 1892)

Yeongeunmun (formerly Yeongjomun)
The Yeongeunmun Gate (literally the “Gate of Welcoming Grace”) was a structure used by thehereditary monarchs of Joseon Korea, which was a tributary state under China’s Ming andQing dynasties, to welcome envoys from the Ming and Qing Emperors. Here, on the occasionof a visit by an imperial envoy, the King of Korea would receive the envoy and welcome him by
kowtowing nine times, touching his forehead to the ground in obeisance.
After Japan’s victory in the first Sino-Japanese War, Joseon Korea left the Qing tributary system
under the terms of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. With the establishment of the Great Korean
Empire, the Yeongeunmun Gate was demolished in 1896 by the Independence Association, agroup of Korean reformers, who erected the Dongnimmun Gate (“Independence Gate”) (nextpage) in 1897 as a monument to commemorate Korea’s independence.

71

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

“Dokuritsu Gate, Keijō (Seoul Landmark)”
Source: Dokuritsu mon (Independence Gate), picture postcard (year of issue
unknown), Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil
servant at the Government-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Dongnimmun (“Independence Gate”)
Korean reformers wanting to open up their country who watched Japan achieving modernization
as a result of the Meiji Restoration aimed to bring about political reforms and modernizationin their own country, which they considered to be corrupt. Although Korea had temporarily
managed to escape the influence of Qing China, Russia was gradually expanding its sphere of
influence. The activities of the Independence Association that erected the gate were taken overby the Iljinhoe, an association that actively worked to support a union between Japan and Korea.
The plaque at the top of the gate was fashioned by Ye Wanyong, who as Prime Minister of Korea
would later sign the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty.

Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant
at the Government-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Government-General of Korea Government Building
The basic design of the building that housed the offices of the Government-General of Korea
was prepared by the German architect Georg de Lalande. After Lalande passed away in 1914, theproject was taken over by Japanese architects (Nomura Ichirō and Kunieda Hiroshi), who saw
the building to completion in 1926. Nomura also worked on other colonial buildings, including
the official residence of the Governor-General of Taiwan and the National Taiwan Museum.
Although used after the Second World War as offices for the South Korean government, thebuilding no longer exists; it was demolished in 1995 and only the dome was left intact.
72

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Chōsen sōtokufu chōsha rakusei-shiki (Government-General of Korea Government
Building dedication ceremony) Saitō Makoto Memorial Museum (photograph taken in 1926)

Government-General of
Korea Government Building Dedication Ceremony
The dedication ceremony for the Central Hall of the Government-General of Korea Government
Building was held in 1926. After the 1919 Korean Independence Movement wound down, thenGovernor-General Saitō Makoto set in motion a variety of reconciliation policies in an attempt toresolve the dissatisfaction of the Korean people. The completion of the new government building
was a major turning point in the governing of Korea.

Source: Maeil sinbo (Daily news)(August 9, 1945)

Korean Mixed Script
Fukuzawa Yukichi and his Japanesecolleagues were the first to devise amixed script incorporating Chinese(hanja) and Korean (hangul) characters.
Fukuzawa created a set-type versionof Hangul for printing. In 1886, Inoue
Kakugorō began publishing the Hansong
sunbo as the first official newspaper in
Korea to use a mixed script of hanja
and hangul characters. The photo above is of an edition of the Maeil sinbo (Daily News), whichshows the extent to which the usage of the mixed script had spread. The feature article reports thedeath of Yi U, grandson of King Gojong (Emperor Gwangmu) of the Joseon dynasty, in the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima.

73

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word:
Interviews with a former civil servant at theGovernment-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hanaShuppansha, 2014

Governor-General Minami Jirōand “Japan and Korea as One
Body” (naisen ittai)
The Government-General of Korea set forth
the idea of “Japan and Korea as One Body”(naisen ittai) as the absolute principle ofregarding Japan (the homeland) and its“outer lands” (i.e., Korea) as the same.
Koreans were given the same status asJapanese nationals, and policy reforms werecarried out to eliminate discrimination. The man on the left side of the photo is Minami Jirō, the seventh
Governor-General of Korea (in office 1936-1942). The caption below the photo reads “A ceremonyhonoring the aged at the Governor-General’s official residence.”

Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with aformer civil servant at the Government-General of Korea”,
Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Koseki chōsa gaihō(Reports on surveys of historical sites)
The Government-General invested funds to safeguard
Korea’s precious cultural heritage. The Committee for the
Study of Korean Antiquities (Chōsen Koseki Kenkyūkai)summarized its records in the form of pamphlets thatwere issued to report on its activities. However, following
Japan’s withdrawal after the end of the Second World War,much of Korea’s cultural heritage was destroyed in the
Korean War that followed.

74

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Source: Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word:
Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea”,
Sakura-no-hana Shuppansha, 2014

Futsū gakkō Chōsen-go tokuhon(Elementary school Korean language primers)
Japan’s school enrollment rate rose from 41 percent in 1878 to over 90 percent by 1902. In 1911,
Korea had approximately 17,000 private village schools (seodang) and approximately 140,000
students, which is less than 7 percent of its estimated school-age population. In view of thedifference with the enrollment rate in Japan, it is evident that popular education lagged in Korea.
Japan made Korean language classes mandator y over the approximately thirty years of its
tenure in Korea. The popularization of hangul took place only after Japan’s annexation of Korea.

75

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Residents-General and Governors-General of Korea
Itō Hirobumi
First Resident-General (In office December 21, 1906 to June 14, 1909)
Other Positions Held: Prime Minister of Japan
In the waning years of the Tokugawa shogunate, he was a student of Yoshida
Shōin at the Shōka Sonjuku, a private academy in the Chōshū domain.
Together with Kido Takayoshi and Takasugi Shinsaku, he joined the Sonnō
jōi movement (“revere the Emperor and expel the barbarians”). In 1871, heparticipated in the Iwakura Mission as vice-envoy extraordinary and earned
the trust of Ōkubo Toshimichi. After Ōkubo’s death, he became Home Ministerand secured a central position in the Meiji government. In 1882, he traveled toEurope to study national constitutions. In 1885, he established a cabinet systemof government and was appointed Japan’s first prime minister. He directed theenactment of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (the Meiji Constitution).
He served as the head of Japan’s Privy Council, the President of the House ofPeers, Prime Minister (on four occasions), and the first Resident-General of
Korea. Itō, who expected that Korea would be ruled by Koreans, adamantly
insisted that there would be no union of Japan and Korea. However, in 1909, he
was assassinated by the Korean-independence activist and ethnic nationalist An
Jung-geun at the Harbin Railway Station. Some say that this shifted the courseof histor y from parallel independence for Korea and Japan to the Japaneseannexation of Korea. The largest political party in Korea at that time, Iljinhoe,
was also in favor of annexation.

Sone Arasuke
Second Resident-General (In office June 15, 1909 to May 30, 1910)
Other Positions Held: Member of the House of Peers and a Privy Councillor
Sone’s adoptive father was a hanshi (feudal retainer) samurai from the Hagi
domain. He served in the Boshin War. After a time spent studying in France,
he took a post at the War Ministry.
In 1890, he became the first Chief Secretary of the House of Representatives.
In 1892, he was elected to the House of Representatives in the second
Japanese general election and ser ved as Vice-Speaker of the House in thesame year. In 1893, as Japan’s ambassador to France, he worked to revise theunequal treaties between France and Japan. In 1898, after being appointed
as Minister of Justice in the third Itō administration, he began reorganizing
the Justice Ministry and compiled a code of laws. In 1906, he was appointed
as a Privy Councillor. In 1909, he was named the second Resident-General of
Korea. Although he played an active role in a variety of fields as a competentbureaucrat versed in laws and administrative work, he retired due to illness.

76

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Terauchi Masatake
Third Resident-General (In office May 30, 1910 to October 1, 1910)
First Governor-General (In office October 1, 1910 to October 14, 1916)
Other Positions Held: Prime Minister of Japan
Terauchi was born in the Chōshū domain and ser ved in the Boshin
War. After serving as the head of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy,
the first Inspector General of Militar y Education, and the Deputy
Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army, he was appointed Army
Minister in the first and second Katsura cabinets and the first Saionji
cabinet. In 1910, he became the third Resident-General of Korea, andsubsequently took office as the first Governor-General of Korea. While
in office, under Imperial Decree No. 40, he promulgated the OrdinanceConcerning the Fiduciar y Super vision of the Payment of Operating
Expenses Incurred by the Office of the Joseon Dynasty and of Annual
Expenses of the Joseon Royal Household. In addition, he oversaw theconstruction of a bridge over the Yalu River and the opening of a direct
rail link between Korea and Manchuria. He developed the education
system, issued regulations for testing the qualifications of physicians, established standards for theclassification of state-owned and private property in forests, highlands, and uncultivated areas to map
out land for tax purposes, and established metropolitan, county, and municipal administrative districts(fu, gu, and myeon) to clarify the status of land ownership. In addition to developments in many otherfields, the celebrated Chosun Hotel opened its doors during Terauchi’s tenure as Governor-General.
Terauchi stepped down as Governor-General and took office as Prime Minister of Japan in 1916. Aftersending troops to Siberia, he resigned his office in 1918 in response to riots triggered by the rising
price of rice.

Hasegawa Yoshimichi
Second Governor-General (In office October 16, 1916 to August 12, 1919)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Army Field Marshal
Hasegawa was the son of a hanshi (feudal retainer) samurai from the
Iwakuni domain. After participating in the Boshin War, he enrolled
in 1870 at the Osaka Heigakuryō, a military training school, and wascommissioned an army captain the following year. He went on to servein the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. He waspromoted to general in 1904. In 1916, he became the second GovernorGeneral of Korea.
During his term of office, Hasegawa established land survey projects
and a land tenure system, promoted irrigation projects and founded theIndustrial Bank of Korea to develop the economy amidst the First World
War. The value of production levels in Korea during his three-year
tenure rose to 1.76 billion yen from 300 million yen. In 1918 he arranged
for the exemption of Japanese import tariffs for Korean products suchas cattle, rice bran, raw silk, iron, and railway construction materials.
He resigned to take responsibility for the March 1st (Sam-il) Korean Independence Movement.
77

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Saitō Makoto
Third Governor-General (In office August 13, 1919 to December 10, 1927)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Navy Admiral, Prime Minister of Japan
Saitō was born to a hanshi (feudal retainer) samurai in the Mizusawa domain.
He was Vice Navy Minister at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. He served
as Navy Minister for eight years and during his tenure, he constantly worked to
expand the fleet. In 1912, he was promoted to admiral. In 1919, he took officeas the third Governor-General of Korea. During his term as Governor-General,
immediately following the outbreak of the March 1st (Sam-il) Independence
Movement, Saitō and his wife were targeted by a bomb attack carried out by
a Korean independence activist upon their arrival at Namdaemun Station.
Unscathed by the incident, they reportedly acted calmly, as though nothing at
all had happened.

Saitō pursued policies for promoting culture and education, such as
improving the treatment of Christian schools, promoting Koreanlanguage education, establishing Keijō Imperial University, andfounding newspapers such as the Chosun ilbo and Donga ilbo. During his tenure, Saitō participated
as a commissioner plenipotentiary with the Japanese delegation at the Geneva Naval Conference on
Disarmament in 1927. Although the conference broke down as the result of a confrontation between
the USA and the UK, Saitō, who took the position of a mediator, was highly regarded for his proposedcompromises, earning him the moniker “Saitō the Cosmopolitan” at home and abroad. (See thesection on the Fifth Governor-General.)Ugaki Kazushige
Acting Governor-General (In office April 15, 1927 to October 1, 1927)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Army General
After becoming a substitute teacher at an elementary school, he journeyedto Tokyo out of a desire to join the military. He graduated from the Imperial
Japanese Army Academy and the Army War College. He was appointed Deputy
War Minister in 1923. In 1924, he was appointed Army Minister in the Kiyoura
cabinet, a post in which he remained through the first Wakatsuki cabinet
and the first and second Katō cabinets. During this time, he succeeded in
implementing arms reduction measures in 1925. He was re-appointed Army
Minister in the Hamaguchi cabinet in 1929 but resigned the post in 1931 after
becoming involved in an abortive coup d’état that came to be known as the
March Incident.
Because Saitō, his predecessor as Governor-General, par ticipated as acommissioner plenipotentiary at the Geneva Conference on Arms Reduction,
Ugaki temporarily took office as acting Governor-General of Korea in his
absence.
During his term of office, the opening ceremonies of the Joseon Industrial
Exhibition, sponsored by the Keijō Nichinichi Shinbun, were held. Ugaki
stepped down as acting Governor-General upon Saitō’s return to Korea.
78

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Yamanashi Hanzō
Fourth Governor-General (In office December 10, 1927 to August 17, 1929)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Army General
Born in Sagami Province, Yamanashi graduated as a member of the eighthclass of the Imperial Japanese Army and from the Army War College. After
service in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, he was the chief of staffof the division that laid siege to Tsingtao during the First World War. In 1918,
Yamanashi was promoted to lieutenant general and in 1921 was appointed
Army Minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hara Takashi, a post he held
subsequently in the cabinets of Prime Ministers Takahashi Korekiyo and Katō
Tomosaburō. In 1922, yielding to public opinion that favored disarmament,
he implemented arms reduction measures (known as the Yamanashi
Disarmament). During this period, he was promoted to full general.
In 1927, he became the fourth Governor-General of Korea. His term of officesaw the accession of the Shōwa Emperor in Japan as well as amnesties andpardons being granted in Korea, including special measures for students who had been disciplined. In 1929,
he was implicated in a corruption scandal affecting the Government-General, in which bribes were allegedly
accepted from rice and grain merchants when an exchange was established in Keijō. Although he was acquitted
in a public trial, he subsequently withdrew completely from public life.

Saitō Makoto
Fifth Governor-General (In office August 17, 1929 to June 17, 1931)
Appointed once again after ser ving as the Third Governor-General
After serving as a privy councillor, he was invited to take charge again to become the fifth
Governor-General of Korea. During his tenure, the Japan Air Transport Corporation beganoffering round-trip passenger flights ever y other day between Fukuoka, Ulsan, Keijō,
Pyongyang and Dalian. Undertaking a major revision of the local government system, hecreated a new provincial (dō) system. He carried out reforms and established legislative
bodies at the provincial (dō), metropolitan (fu), and municipal (eup) levels of government togive them complete autonomy. Although he had a good track record, he resigned his post
due to illness.
After his return to Japan, he became the Prime Minister of the national unity cabinet following the attempted
coup of May 15 1932. In 1934, after the cabinet resigned en masse as a result of the Teijin Incident (a bribery
scandal related to the Teijin Silk Company), he became Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, but was assassinated in
the attempted coup of February 26, 1936.

Ugaki Kazushige
Sixth Governor-General (In office June 17, 1931 to August 5, 1936)
Appointed once again after ser ving as the Acting Governor-General
After serving in an acting capacity after the third Governor-General, Ugaki was appointed
as the sixth governor-general. The Mukden Incident (1931) occurred immediately after
he took up his appointment, putting Korea on a wartime footing. On July 1, 1932, at 7:40
p.m., the League of Nations-sponsored Lytton Commission paid a visit to the GovernmentGeneral. In May 1935, he authorized the Joseon Electric Company to build a large thermal
power plant in the Yeongwol coal field in Kangwon Province and operate a trunk power line
to transmit the power that was generated to the Daegu, Pusan, and Daejeon regions. Afterthe end of World War II, he was elected to the House of Councillors in 1953.
79

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Minami Jirō
Seventh Governor-General (In office August 5, 1936 to May 29, 1942)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Army GeneralA native of Ōita prefecture. Minami graduated in the sixth class of the Imperial
Japanese Army Academy in 1895 and as par t of the seventeenth class of
the Army War College in 1903. After commanding the 16th Division of theImperial Japanese Army and serving as Vice Chief of the Imperial JapaneseArmy General Staff, he was promoted to full general in March 1930, and in1931 was involved in the Mukden Incident as Minister of War in the Wakatsuki
Cabinet. After ser ving further as a member of the Supreme War Council
and as Commander of the Kwangtung Army, he was placed on the reser velist after the February 26 Incident of 1936, but was appointed as the seventh
Governor-General of Korea that same year. In 1936, he visited Kangwon
Province to inspect areas damaged by floods. It was Minami who determined
the regulations for the Government-General of Korea’s Regional Civil Servant
Training Center. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in
1937, he worked to deal with the increased tensions. After his return to Japan,
he became a member of the Privy Council in 1942, and a member of the Houseof Peers in the Japanese Diet in 1945, serving concurrently as the president of
the Great Japan Political Society (Dai nihon seiji-kai). After the end of WorldWar II, he was tried at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to life
imprisonment as a so-called Class A War Criminal but was paroled in 1954
before his death the following year.

Koiso Kuniaki
Eighth Governor-General (In office May 29, 1942 to July 22, 1944)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Army General, Prime Minister of Japan
Koiso’s father was a member of a former samurai family in Yamagata
Prefecture. Koiso graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in1900 and served in the Russo-Japanese war. In 1905, he began studies at the
Army War College, and after becoming an instructor at the Imperial JapaneseArmy Academy, went on to a career that included an appointment to theImperial Japanese Army General Staff. In 1930, he was appointed as chief of the
Army Affairs Bureau, and later served as Vice-Minister of the Army, Chief ofthe Kwantung Army Staff, and commander of the 5th Division of the Imperial
Japanese Army.
In 1935, he became commander of the Chōsen Army in Korea (Japanese
Korean Army) and was promoted to full general in 1937. After ser ving as
Minister of Colonial Affairs in the Hiranuma cabinet in 1939, he was appointed
as the eighth Governor-General of Korea in 1942. After returning to Japan, he
was appointed Prime Minister of Japan in the wake of the resignation of the
Tōjō cabinet in 1944. Following Japan’s defeat, he was tried at the Tokyo War
Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment as a so-called Class A War
Criminal. He later died in prison from illness.
80

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Abe Nobuyuki
Ninth Governor-General (In office July 24, 1944 to September 28, 1945)
Other Positions Held: Imperial Japanese Army General
Abe’s father was a hanshi (feudal retainer) samurai from the Kanazawa domain.
Abe studied at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and Army War College.
He became Vice-Minister of the Army in 1928 and assisted Army Minister
Ugaki Kazushige in the Hamaguchi cabinet. When Ugaki was forced byillness to take a leave of absence, Abe was appointed to serve as interim Army
Minister.
After wards, he ser ved as the commander of the 4th Division and then as
commander of the Japanese Taiwan Army. He was promoted to full generalin 1933 and served on the Supreme War Council. Although he became Prime
Minister of Japan, concurrently holding the portfolio of Foreign Minister, hestepped down in 1934 after just over four months in office. He was sent as a
special envoy to the government of Wang Jingwei in Nanjing, and later served
as president of the Imperial Rule Assistance Political Association.
In 1944, he was appointed the last Governor-General of Korea.
In 1945, immediately after Japan’s defeat, he was requested to maintain orderin Korea by the US military, which was concerned that Korea would descend
into anarchy. Korea was subsequently placed under the jurisdiction of theAllied Forces.

Residents-General and Governors-General of Korea
Sources of photographs:
National Diet Library Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures (http://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/)
And other sources

81

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

A Brief Histor y of Modern Japan and Korea

82

1811

In the eighth year of the Bunka era, 366 members of the final Korean mission to Japan (Chōsen tsūshinshi) arriveat the island of Tsushima to congratulate the accession of Tokugawa Ienari as shogun. Although the sending of
the mission had been originally scheduled for 1787, it was delayed in large part due to financial difficulties in bothcountries. The exchange of sovereign messages between the two nations is realized with a formal “Reception at
a Remote Outpost.” While visits by the Korean embassy had taken place as many as twelve times since 1607, thisoccasion marked the end of formal diplomacy between Japan and Korea until the signing of the Japan-Korea Treatyof Amity (Treaty of Ganghwa Island) sixty-five years later.

1832

The British ship Lord Amherst arrives in Korea and asks to be allowed to trade.

1840

The First Opium War between the Qing dynasty and the United Kingdom./The UK exports opium produced in its
Indian colonies to Qing China. (The Qing suffers devastation and fights back.)

1845

The British naval ship HMS Samarang conducts unauthorized surveys of Jeju Island and other Korean territories.

1846

France sends warships to protest the Korean suppression of Christianity.

1848

Foreign ships arrive more frequently in Korea. Pressure to open the country to the major European powers grows
stronger.

1849

The Netherlands colonizes the island of Bali.

1852

The Second Anglo-Burmese War breaks out./The UK occupies lower Burma.

1853

The “Black Ships” commanded by US Commodore Matthew Perry arrive in Uraga. They ask for permission to use
Japan as a port of call for supplying whaling vessels.

1854

The signing of the Convention of Kanagawa, the first treaty between the USA and Japan. (This marks the end ofJapan’s period of national isolation.)

1856

Outbreak of the Second Opium War (the “Arrow War”) between Qing China and the UK and France, which want toexpand trade with China. The war ends in 1860 with the Convention of Peking. Followed by the opening of the portof Tientsin (Tianjin), part of the Kowloon Peninsula is ceded, and the trading of opium is recognized, amounting to
the semi-colonization of Qing China.

1857

The Sepoy Mutiny, the first major Indian ethnic uprising against the British, breaks out.

1858

Signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (the Harris Treaty) between the United States and Japan (an “unequal
treaty” under which Japan surrendered national sovereignty and was prevented from charging customs duties inforeign settlements on its own soil, and the amendment of which required the approval of other countries)./The
UK establishes the Government of India and begins administering India directly (promulgation of the Governmentof India Act).

1859

Allied Anglo-French forces occupy Saigon in Vietnam.

1860

Choe Je-u founds the Donghak movement (opposed to "western knowledge" and Catholicism).

1861

Russian warships occupy Tsushima (for approximately six months).

1862

France seizes three provinces in South Vietnam.

1863

Accession of King Gojong, the twenty-sixth king of the Joseon dynasty. His father, the Heungseon Daewongun,
holds the real power as regent. The Daewongun advocates a firm policy of expelling foreigners and closing ports
to foreign trade, and subscribes to the philosophy of Sojunghwa (“little Sinocentrism”). The influence of the familyof Queen Consort Myeongseong (Queen Min) increases./Cambodia becomes a protectorate of France.

1866

France sends a fleet of seven ships as retribution for Korea’s execution of French Catholic priests. The ships are
repelled by Korean resistance./The General Sherman, an armed American merchant marine vessel, is set on fireby Koreans, resulting in the deaths of all 20 crew members.

1868

The Meiji Restoration. The following year, Japan notifies Korea of the restoration of Imperial rule. The Japanese
message includes the Chinese characters for “Emperor” and “Imperial decree,” which prompts the Koreans torefuse the receipt of the message on several occasions. (This is known as the “problem of letters”). Korea claims
that the Qing is the only power permitted to use these characters.

1871

The Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty is signed while diplomatic relations between Joseon Korea
and Japan remain at a stalemate. Diplomatic relations between Japan and the Qing, Korea’s suzerain state, areestablished on an equal footing./A US fleet attacks Ganghwa Island in retaliation for the General Sherman incident.
Although the Americans suffer almost no casualties, in contrast to approximately 240 dead on the Korean side,
Korea remains closed to trade./A great famine strikes Korea. Despite the many deaths, the Joseon dynasty does
not take measures to address the crisis and opts to maintain its policy of national isolation./Japanese sailors
shipwrecked in Taiwan are massacred.

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

83

1872

The Tsushima Domain’s Sōryō Wakan, established in Pusan (Busan) as a point of contact with Korea, is renamed
the Japanese diplomatic office in Korea and staffed with Foreign Ministry officials.

1873

The Daewongun falls from influence and Queen Min comes to hold the real power./While Japan and Korea remain
deadlocked over the “problem of letters,” Saigō Takamori and his colleagues propose the Seikanron, advocating apunitive expedition to Korea to force it to open to foreign trade. Saigō opposes sending troops to Korea and insiststhat he should go as an envoy, but his trip is called off./France occupies Hanoi./The Netherlands invades theisland of Sumatra.

1874

Vietnam becomes a protectorate of France./Japan sends troops to Taiwan in retaliation for the massacre ofJapanese sailors.

1875

Gangwha Island incident. The Japanese gunboat Un’yō-gō is fired upon by Koreans near Gangwha Island. The
vessel retaliates and its crew occupies Yeongjongdo Island. The death toll includes 1 Japanese and 35 Koreans.

1876

The Japan-Korea Treaty of Amity (Treaty of Ganghwa Island) is signed and Korea’s ports are opened to trade.
While the treaty declares Korea to be an independent state free of tributary relations with Qing China, it also
includes provisions that are disadvantageous to the Koreans. Antagonism between Japan and Qing China, which
had ruled Korea as a suzerain state, becomes noticeable.

1877

A Japanese settlement is established in Pusan (Busan).

1881

Korea sends a mission of 62 courtiers to Japan and another mission of 69 envoys to Qing China to promote
opening-up policies./Yun Chi-ho and others become the first Korean students to travel to Japan, where they deepen
friendships with people such as Fukuzawa Yukichi./Lieutenant Horimoto Reizō is invited to Korea to serve as aJapanese adviser to oversee military reforms and train an army with Western equipment.

1882

Imo Incident. Taking advantage of riots by soldiers disaffected with the rule of Queen Min, the Heungseon
Daewongun attempts to overthrow the regime. Senior government officials belonging to Queen Min’s family
and Japanese embassy officials are attacked and killed. A contributing factor is the disaffection of soldiers who
had been dismissed or whose salaries (rice stipends) had fallen into arrears owing to financial difficulties. At therequest of Kim Ok-gyun, who is in Japan, the Japanese send 1,500 members of their army and naval forces to
Korea./The Daewongun is kidnapped by Qing forces that were ostensibly sent to put down the rebellion and is
kept in detention in China for three years./Korea is unable to quell the rebellion on its own and has to rely on the
Qing, which shows that Korea is effectively a Qing territory.

1883

The Korean government establishes the Office of Culture and Information (Bangmunguk). With cooperationfrom Fukuzawa Yukichi and his colleagues, Korea’s first newspaper, the Hanseong sunbo, begins publishing./The
Taegukgi (literally “supreme ultimate flag”) is officially proclaimed the national flag of Korea.

1884

The Gapsin Coup—a coup by Kim Ok-gyun and other members of the Enlightenment faction (seeking to establish
a modern constitutional monarchy on the model of Japan)—is launched. Queen Min sends a secret missive to Qing
requesting the rescue of the King and herself. A force of 1,500 Qing troops is sent under the command of General
Yuan Shikai, and the coup is suppressed after three days./The families of people within the third degree of kinshipwith the Enlightenment faction, including exiles, are brutally executed./A commerce treaty between Korea andRussia is signed. Russia’s sphere of influence extends to Korea.

1885

The Convention of Tientsin (Tianjin) is signed between Japan and Qing China (neither country to send
troops to Korea without first informing the other)./Fukuzawa Yukichi, a close associate of Kim Okgyun, publishes “Datsu-A-ron” (Argument for Leaving Asia)./The UK becomes wary of the increasing
friendliness between Russia and the Korean government and occupies the island of Port Hamilton(Komundo) to block the passage of Russia’s Far Eastern Fleet./The Japan-Korea Treaty of 1885 (Treatyof Hanseong) is signed to repair relations with Japan, which had suffered from the fallout of the Gapsin
Coup.

1887

British forces withdraw from Port Hamilton (Komundo) through the mediation of the Qing.

1889

The Constitution of the Empire of Japan (the Meiji Constitution) is promulgated.

1894

Kim Ok-gyun is assassinated in Shanghai by agents of Queen Min. His corpse is subjected to lingchi—
slow dismembering—and parts of his body are put on display in various locations around Korea. (Amemorial service was arranged at Hongan-ji Temple in Asakusa in Tokyo by Fukuzawa Yukichi andothers.)/The Donghak Rebellion (also known as the Gabo Peasant War) breaks out. This was a large
peasant rebellion sparked by the difficulties people had making a living—stemming from corruption
and the heavy taxation imposed by Queen Min’s regime. Queen Min’s regime requests aid from Qing
China to quell the rebellion. Japan also sends troops, ostensibly to protect Japanese nationals, but
Japanese troops clash with Qing forces, which regarded Korea as a tributary state of China./Outbreakof the first Sino-Japanese War./The Gabo Reforms. Backed by Japan, reforms are begun that will leadto Korea’s independence and modernization. The family of Queen Min is banished, and the first Kim
Hong-jip Cabinet is formed.

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

84

1895

The First Sino-Japanese War ends with a victory for Japan. The Treaty of Shimonoseki is signed. The
treaty explicitly declares Korea to be an independent country rather than a dependent territory of
Qing China. Korea’s King Gojong accepts the demands of the Enlightenment faction./Intervention by
three countries: France, Germany, and Russia request the return of the Liaodong Peninsula, which had
been transferred to Japan, to Qing China./Intervention in Japanese affairs by the world’s great powers
strengthens pro-Russia sympathies in Korea, especially on the part of Queen Min. Pak Yung-hio (whodesigned the Taegukgi flag) is suspected of fomenting rebellion and is exiled to Japan./Eulmi Incident.
Queen Min is assassinated by Japanese officials, including Miura Gorō, Japan’s resident minister in
Korea, and members of the kunrentai (Japanese-trained Korean troops)./Proclamation of the Korean
Hair-cut Edict./The Japanese Cabinet decides to lay claim to the Senkaku Islands (by a procedure
consistent with the international legal doctrine of prior occupation, after confirming the absence of any
territorial claims by other countries for the past ten years).

1896

Adoption of the solar calendar in Korea./Adoption of further pro-Russian policies prompts Korea’s
King Gojong to takes refuge at the Russian legation./Establishment of the Independence Association.
The Yeongeunmun Gate, formerly used to welcome envoys from Qing China, which had exercisedsuzerainty over Korea, is demolished. The Dongnimmun Gate (“Independence Gate”), modeled on
France’s Arc de Triomphe, is erected on the same site.

1897

King Gojong returns from the Russian legation./Korea changes its name to the Great Korean Empire
in imitation of Japan, and King Gojong is proclaimed Emperor. Japan forges cooperative ties with Korea
in the expectation that as an independent nation, Korea will serve as a breakwater against Russia andQing China./Germany occupies Jiaozhou Bay in China.

1898

Russia leases Dalian and Lüshun./The Spanish–American War breaks out./The USA signs the Treatyof Annexation of Hawaii.

1899

The USA occupies the Philippines.

1900

Opening of the Gyeongin Line (Seoul to Incheon). Shibusawa Ei’ichi serves as President of the railway.

1902

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed./Japan’s Dai-Ichi Bank issues banknotes (paper currency) in
Korea.

1904

Outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War./Japan–Korea Treaty of 1904 is signed (Japan to advise Korea
on fiscal diplomacy)./Koreans in the Enlightenment faction form the Iljinhoe, a group engaging in
activities aiming at the union of Japan and Korea.

1905

The Taft-Katsura Agreement is signed. Japan and the USA mutually recognize the status of Korea
and the Philippines./The Russo-Japanese War ends with a Japanese victor y. Signing of the JapanRussia Treaty of Peace (Treaty of Portsmouth)./Signing of the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 (making
Korea a protectorate of Japan)./A resolution by the Japanese Cabinet is passed to place Takeshima
under the jurisdiction of the Oki Islands branch office of the Shimane Prefectural Government./The
Keifu Railroad (a trunk line linking Seoul and Pusan [Busan]) is opened by Japan and becomes fully
operational.

1906

Itō Hirobumi becomes the first Resident-General of Korea.

1907

The Hague Secret Emissary Affair occurs. Emperor Gojong attempts to recover Korea’s diplomatic
rights by appealing to the international community, but fails when no countries pay attention./Emperor
Gojong abdicates, and Emperor Sunjong is enthroned./The Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907 is signed(ceding the administration of Korea’s internal affairs to Japan).

1908

Japan establishes the Oriental Development Company (Tōyō Takushoku K.K.) (The company begins
investments for the development of Korea's agriculture, industry, railways, and electric power.).

1909

Itō Hirobumi is assassinated by An Jung-geun at Harbin Station./The Korean Enlightenment faction,
the Iljinhoe, submits a Written Statement in Favor of the Union of Japan and Korea to Prime Minister
Ye Wanyong, the Sunjong Emperor, and Resident-General Sone Arasuke.

1910

The Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty is signed./The Government-General of Korea is established./Land
survey projects begin in Korea.

1911

The Korean Education Ordinance is enacted. (Japan establishes the foundations for an educational
system in Korea.)/The Treaty of Commerce and Navigation is signed by Japan and the USA (Japanobtains the right to set its own tariffs.)

1912

The Meiji Emperor dies./Korean Standard Time is switched to become the same as Japan time./The
Xinhai Revolution breaks out and the monarchy under the Qing Dynasty is abolished. The Republic ofChina is established. (Sun Yat-Sen becomes the Provisional President.)

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

85

1914

The First World War breaks out. (Japan also enters the war, pursuant to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.)

1915

Japan submits its “Twenty-One Demands" to China.

1917

The Russian Revolution begins./The Lansing-Ishii Agreement is signed by the United States and theEmpire of Japan (The Agreement calls for mutual respect for each other’s interests in mainland China
and US approval of Japanese interests in Manchuria).

1918

US President Woodrow Wilson proposes his “Fourteen Points” as principles for peace (e.g., ethnic selfdetermination)./ Japan sends troops to Siberia at the behest of the USA.

1919

Emperor Gojong dies. The March 1st Independence Movement begins in Korea./The Provisional
Government of the Republic of Korea is formed in Shanghai (and becomes the base for Korea’s
independence movement)./Saitō Makoto takes office as the third Governor-General of Korea./The
establishment of one school for every three 3 myeon (townships) in Korea is planned./The Imperial
Rescript Concerning the Reorganization of the Government-General of Korea is promulgated./The
Paris Peace Conference is convened. (Japan proposes to eliminate racial discrimination.)/Mohandas
Gandhi begins his campaign of civil disobedience.

1920

The newspapers Chosun Ilbo and Dong-A Ilbo are launched; permission is granted for ethnic newspapers
in Korea./Min Won-sik argues for voting rights and self-governance for Koreans who are carrying out
lawful activities in the Japanese Empire./Establishment of the League of Nations; Japan is recognized
as a major power and is made a permanent member of the League’s Council./In the Nikolayevsk
Incident, more than 6,000 people, including at least 731 Japanese nationals, are killed by Russian Red
Army soldiers in the Russian town of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur.

1922

The Washington Naval Treaty (abrogated by Japan in 1934) is signed. /The Soviet Union is founded.

1923

The Great Kantō Earthquake strikes the Tokyo area. (About 1.9 million people suffer its effects;
105,000 people die.)

1924

Founding of Keijō Imperial University as Japan’s sixth Imperial University (now Seoul National
University), Taipei Imperial University as the seventh, Osaka Imperial University as the eighth.

1926

Death of the Taishō Emperor./Death of Emperor Sunjong (given a state funeral in accordance withthe tradition for Korean dynastic rulers)./June 10th Movement (Yuk-ship Undong) seeking Korean
independence takes place in Korea.

1927

Korea Nitrogenous Fertilizer Company (Chōsen Chisso Hiryō Kabushiki Kaisha) is founded, with alarge plant in Hungnam.

1929

Saitō Makoto takes office a second time as the fifth Governor-General of Korea /One school is planned
to be established in every myeon (township)./The Great Depression begins./The Gwangju Student
Uprising erupts (conflict between Japanese and Korean students spreads all over Korea).

1930

The London Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament is signed (criticisms erupt inJapan).

1931

Mukden Incident (Manchurian Incident)./Ugaki Kazushige is appointed to ser ve as the acting
Governor-General of Korea.

1932

Shanghai Incident./Park Chun-geum runs in the general election of 1932 and is elected as a member ofthe Lower House from Tokyo’s Fourth Electoral District. (He calls for voting rights for ethnic Japanesein Korea and a system for bringing Korean volunteers into the military.)/Hongkew Park Bombing inShanghai./Attempt to assassinate the Shōwa Emperor./Founding of Manchukuo.

1933

Birth of Crown Prince Akihito (the current Emperor as of 2014)./Japan withdraws from the League of
Nations./A direct telephone link from Keijō (Seoul) to Tokyo is opened.

1936

Minami Jirō takes office as the seventh Governor-General of Korea./February 26 Incident (former
Governor-General Saitō Makoto is assassinated)./Sohn Kee-chung wins the gold medal in the marathon
at the Berlin Olympics.

1937

The China Incident (i.e., the Lukouchiao or Marco Polo Bridge Incident) occurs./Oath as imperial
subjects is established for Korean citizens./Tongzhou Incident in China (resulting in the massacreof approximately 223 Japanese nationals)./China’s Kuomintang government moves its capital to
Chongqing./Fall of Nanjing.

1938

With the Third Amendment of the Korean Education Ordinance, the Korean language is no longer
a compulsory subject./Beginning of a system that allows Koreans to volunteer for service in Japan’s
military./Enactment of the National Mobilization Law./The Konoe Cabinet proclaims a “New Order in
East Asia.”

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

86

1939

Outbreak of the Second World War./The National Service Draft Ordinance is enacted in Japan./The
Nomonhan Incident breaks out (a large armed conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union).

1940

Notifications are sent for the creation of family names (sōshi) and adoption of Japanese names (kaimei)(voluntary, not mandatory)./Yun Deok-yeong, a proponent of annexation, is appointed vice-chairman of
the Government-General of Korea’s Privy Council.

1941

The USA issues the Hull note (officially called the Outline of Proposed Basis for Agreement Between
the United States and Japan); a de facto declaration of war./Attack on Pearl Harbor begins the Greater
East Asia War (Japan’s name for the Pacific War).

1942

February: Fall of Singapore; the British military is defeated by Japan./June: The Battle of Midway ends
in a major defeat for Japan.

1943

Applications to join the Japanese militar y are submitted by more than 300,000 Korean volunteers,
amounting to 56.9 times the recruitment capacity./At the Cairo Conference, Korean independence
and other post-war policies about Japan are discussed by the US, UK, and the Chiang Kai-shek
government./The Greater East Asia Conference is convened, making for the first summit meeting ofcolored people in history.

1944

A bill is enacted into law requiring that the overseas allowance paid to Japanese government officials
in Korea be also applied to the salaries of Korean junior officials (hanninkan). The same principle isextended to senior officials (kōtōkan) the following year./Koreans are made subject to the Service Draft
Ordinance./Although the conscription of Koreans begins, the war ends before any drafted Korean
soldiers see battle. The conscription of Japanese has been in effect since 1873.

1945

From February 4: The US and UK participate in the Yalta Conference to coordinate their interests
regarding the framework of the post-war world.
March 10

Tokyo Air Raid (100,000 dead in a single night).

April 1US troops land on the main island of the Okinawa island chain.

May 7

Germany surrenders unconditionally.

From May 25

Most of metropolitan Tokyo is burned and destroyed in air raids. Most major cities inJapan are similarly scorched and food shortages ensue.

July 26

The USA, the UK and China issue the Potsdam Declaration.

August 6

Atomic bombing of Hiroshima (140,000 dead in the immediate aftermath).

August 8

The Soviet Union declares war on Japan (in violation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality
Pact).

August 9

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki (90,000 dead in the immediate aftermath).

August 14

Japan accepts the Potsdam Declaration.

August 15

The Shōwa Emperor announces the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War (the“Jewel Voice Broadcast”).

August 18

Soviet troops invade the Northern Territories (Kuril Islands).

September 1

The Soviet Union disarms Japan’s Kwantung Army.

September 2

Consideration given to a plan for a divided occupation of Korea by US and Soviet forces
separated by the 38th parallel north, which crosses the Korean peninsula.

September 5

The Soviet Union starts transferring Japanese prisoners of war to Siberia. About 650,000
Japanese become forced laborers.

September 8

US forces are stationed south of the 38th parallel in Korea.

September 9

The Government-General of Korea signs a document of surrender with the US military.

1946

The First U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission is convened. Talks break down on the subject of Korean
governance./The International Militar y Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Tribunal) commences./
Capital sentences are passed on approximately 1,000 Japanese by military tribunals held in various
countries./ The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers directs the expulsion of various officials
from public office in Japan./The draft of SCAP’s revised constitution is submitted to the Japanese
government./The Constitution of Japan is promulgated.

1947

A proposal for unified elections in Korea under the supervision of the United Nations is vetoed by theSoviet Union. Unified elections on the Korean Peninsula become impossible.

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

1948

Residents of Jeju Island rise up to oppose the idea of elections in only South Korea. The South Korean
government massacres approximately 80,000 islanders. Many survivors flee to Japan./South Korea
holds its own general election./Founding of the Government of the Republic of Korea (South Korea).
Syngman Rhee takes office as the first president./ Kim Il Sung is backed by the Soviet Union as
supreme leader and founds the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).

1949

Founding of the People’s Republic of China with Mao Zedong as the supreme leader./Chiang Kai-shek
escapes to Taiwan and re-establishes the Government of the Republic of China.

1950

Outbreak of the Korean War (North Korea’s Communist troops advance on South Korea). US President
Harry Truman orders the US military to be sent to Korea./UN forces are sent./China’s military enters
the war./The conflict becomes a de facto proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union.

1951

The San Francisco Peace Treaty is signed, formally ending hostilities between Japan and the AlliedPowers in the Second World War. China and South Korea are not invited to participate in the signing.
The USSR refuses to sign.

1952

Syngman Rhee unilaterally claims Japanese territor y including Takeshima Island for South Korea(unilateral determination of the Syngman Rhee Line). The illegal occupation continues after the
proclamation.

1953

Signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement. Korea is divided at the 38th parallel, resulting in Northand South Korea. In the wake of the Korean War, the death toll for the entire peninsula, including thosedead of starvation, is estimated at five million people (with approximately 10 million more affected byfamily separations).

1956

The UN General Assembly unanimously approves Japan's accession to the United Nations.

1963

Park Chung-hee takes office as the fifth President of the Republic of Korea.

1965

Signing of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea (normalization of
diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea)./The Japanese government agrees to pay theSouth Korean government 300 million US dollars, equivalent to South Korea’s state budget, as funds for“economic cooperation,” along with a further 200 million US dollars in low-interest loans. South Korea’s
government and citizens agree not to make any further claims against Japan.

1972

Normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China. Japan recognizes Taiwan as part ofChina.

1979

President Park Chung-hee is shot and killed by his aide at age 61.

Selected Reference Materials [in Japanese]
Ajia rekishi jiten [Historical dictionary of Asia]. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1960.
Chōsen-shi kenkyūkai [The Society for Korean Historical Science], ed. Chōsen no rekishi [A history of Korea], Tokyo:
Sanseidō, 1995.
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan. Kōbunsho ni miru Iwakura shisetsudan [The Iwakura
Mission as seen from official documents]. Available online at http://www.jacar.go.jp/iwakura/index2.html.
Japan Magazine Publishers Association and Japan Book Publishers Association. Dejitaru-ban Nihon shuppan hyaku-nenshi
nenpyō [A century of Japanese publishing, digital edition].
Nakamura Akira. Daitōa sensō e no michi [The road to the Greater East Asia War]. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1991.
National Diet Library. Shiryō ni miru Nihon no kindai [Modern Japan in archives: Political history from the opening of thecountry to the post-war]. Available online at http://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/.

87

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

Columns and Chronologies: Selected References
Columns and Chronologies: Selected References
Ajia rekishi jiten [Historical dictionary of Asia]. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1960.
Akita, George and Brandon Palmer. “Nihon no Chōsen tōchi” o kenshō suru: 1910–1945 [Japan in Korea: Japan’s Fair and Moderate
Colonial Policy (1910-1945) and Its Legacy on South Korea’s Developmental Miracle]. Translated by Shioya Kō. Tokyo:
Sōshisha, 2013.
Che Keiho. Nikkan heigō: Rekishi saikenshō: Kanminzoku o sukutta ‘Nittei 36-nen’ no shinjitsu [Japan’s annexation of Korea: The
truth of the ‘36 years of the Japanese Empire’ that saved the Korean people (Rethinking history)]. Tokyo: Shōdensha, 2004.
Chōsen-shi Kenkyūkai [The Society for Korean Historical Science], ed. Chōsen no rekishi [A history of Korea]. Tokyo: Sanseidō,
1995.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea], Rinji Tochi Chōsakyoku, ed. Chōsen tochi chōsa jigyō hōkoku-sho [Report on the
Korea land survey project]. Seoul: Chōsen Sōtokufu, Rinji Tochi Chōsakyoku, 1918.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea], ed. Chōsen sōtokufu shisei nenpō showa 10 nendo [Annual report on theadministration of the Government-General of Korea, fiscal year 1935]. Seoul: Chōsen Sōtokufu, 1939.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea], ed. Chōsen sōtokufu oyobi shozoku kansho shokuin-roku [Staff records of theGovernment-General of Korea and affiliated offices], Volumes 24 to 33. Seoul: Chikazawa Insatsubu, 1933–43.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea], Nōrinkyoku, ed. Hokusen kaitaku jigyō keikaku ni yoru kadenmin shidō oyobi
shinrin hogo shisetsu gaiyō [Outline of guidance for hwajeonmin cultivators and forest conservation facilities in the northern
Korea development project plan]. Seoul: Chōsen Sōtokufu, Nōrinkyoku, 1934.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea]. Shisei sanjū-nen-shi [Thirty years of governance]. Seoul: Chōsen Sōtokufu, 1940.
Chung Daekyun and Furuta Hiroshi. Kankoku Kitachōsen no uso o miyaburu: Kingendai-shi no sōten 30 [Seeing through the lies ofNorth and South Korea: Issues in modern history 30]. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2006.
Furuno Naoya. Chōsengun Shireibu: 1904-1945 [Japan’s Korean Military Headquarters: 1904-1945]. Tokyo: Kokushokankōkai,1990.
Gaimushō jōhō bunka kyoku [Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information and Culture Bureau]. Gaimushō happyō-shū [Ministry ofForeign Affairs Bulletin], no. 9 (July 1959) and Kōhyō shiryōshū [Publication source book], no.7. 1959.
Hagiwara Shintarō. Saraba Senzaki hikiagekō: Haisen gekidō no hazama kara [Farewell Senzaki, harbor of deportation. From thejaws of defeat and upheaval]. Tokyo: Marujusha, 1985.
Inaba Tsugio. “Inoue Kakugorō to Hanseong sunbo / Hanseong jubo: Hanguru saiyō mondai o chūshin ni” [Kakugoro Inoue and The
Seasonal Journal Hanseong /The Weekly Journal Hanseong]. Bungei gengo kenkyū. Gengo-hen 12 (1987): 209–225.
Ireland, Alleyne. The New Korea. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1926. Reprinted with Japanese translation and edited by
Sakuranohana Henshū Shuppanbu. Tokyo: Sakuranohana Shuppan: 2013.
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan. Kōbunsho ni miru Iwakura shisetsudan [The Iwakura Mission
as seen from official documents]. Available online at http://www.jacar.go.jp/iwakura/index2.html.
Japan Magazine Publishers Association and Japan Book Publishers Association. Dejitaru-ban Nihon shuppan hyaku-nenshi nenpyō [Acentury of Japanese publishing, digital edition].
Kang, Hildi. Kuroi kasa no shita de: Nihon shokuminchi ni ikita Kankokujin no koe [Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial
Korea, 1910-1945]. Translated by Kuwahata Yuka. Tokyo: Burūsu Intāakushonzu, 2009.
Kim Yong Chan. “Kindai Chōsen ni okeru nashonarizumu to ‘shinboru’ no kinō ni kansuru ichikōsatsu: Dokuritsu kyōkai no katsudō
to dokuritsu-mon o megutte (1896–1899)” [A Study of Functionality of the “Symbol” on Nationalism in Modern Korea: Activitiesof the Independence Club and the Independence Arch (1896–1899)]. Ritsumeikan kokusai chiiki kenkyū [Ritsumeikan Journal ofInternational Relations and Area Studies] 36 (October 2012): 189–205.
Kimura, Kan. “Shinpojiumu sanka hōkoku dai 3-kai Kankoku heigō saikentō kokusai kaigi: ‘Gōhō ihō’ o koete” [A report ofparticipation at the third and final conference on ‘Reconsidering the Annexation of Korea’: beyond ‘legality’ and ‘illegality’].
Nihon shokuminchi kenkyū [The Journal of Japanese Colonial History] 14 (2002).
Kō Bun’yū. Kankoku wa Nihonjin ga tsukutta [South Korea was built by the Japanese]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 2012.
Matsuki Kunitoshi. Hontō wa, “Nikkan heigō” ga Kankoku o sukutta! [The truth is that Japan’s annexation of Korea saved Korea].
Tokyo: Wac, 2011.
McKenzie, Frederick Arthur. The Tragedy of Korea. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1908.
Mizuma Masanori. Asahi Shimbun ga hōdō shita Nikkan heigō no shinjitsu [The truth of Japan’s annexation of Korea from coverageby the Asahi Shimbun]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 2010.
Mizuno Naoki, Anzako Yuka, Sakai Hiromi and Katsumura Makoto, eds. Shokuminchi Chōsen ni ikiru [Life in colonial Korea].
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012.
Nagoshi Futaaranosuke, ed. Nikkan kyōmei nisennenshi [Two millennia of Japanese-Korean sympathy]. Tokyo: Meiseisha, 2002.
Nakamura Akira. Daitōa sensō e no michi [The road to the Greater East Asia War]. Tokyo: Tendensha, 1991.
National Diet Library. Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures. Available online at http://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/.

88

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea

National Diet Library. Shiryō ni miru Nihon no kindai [Modern Japan in archives: Political history from the opening of the country to
the post-war]. Available online at http://www.ndl.go.jp/modern/.
Ono Saburo, ed. Haku’un yūyū [Boundless white clouds].Tokyo: Senshi Kankōkai, 1983.
Riōgin Denki Kankō Kai [Prince Yi Eun Biography Publication Society]. Eishinnō ri gin den: Ri ōchō saigo no kōtaishi [Biographyof Prince Yi Eun: The last Crown Prince of the Korean Yi dynasty]. Tokyo: Kyōei Shobō, 1978.
Sankei Shimbun, Morning edition for January 1, 2014.
SAPIO Magazine Editorial Department, ed. Nihonjin ga shitte okubeki ianfu no shinjitsu [The truth about the comfort women that theJapanese people should know]. Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2013.
Seiron, issues from March 2003, August 2003, and January 2012. Sangyō Keizai Shinbunsha.
Sugimoto Mikio. Dēta kara mita Nihon tōchika no Taiwan, Chōsen, purasu Firipin [A data-based account of Taiwan, Korea, and thePhilippines under Japanese rule]. Tokyo: Ryūkeishosha, 1997.
Tsushima Tourism Association. Kokkyō no shima: Tsushima e [To Tsushima, the island on the border]. Available online at http://www.
tsushima-net.org/.
Yūhō Kyōkai. Watanabe Toyohiko kōjutsu Chōsen sōtokufu kaikodan [Watanabe Toyohiko’s oral reminiscences on the GovernmentGeneral of Korea]. Tokyo: Yūhō Kyōkai 1984.

Materials and Photographs
Asahi Shimbun, Evening edition for October 21, 1943.
Asahi Shimbun, Morning edition for March 19, 1945.
Asahi Shimbun, July 13, 1959.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea], Government-General of Korea Railway Bureau, ed. Hantō no kinkei [A close-upof the peninsula]. Nihon Hanga Insatsu, 1937.
Chōsen Sōtokufu [Government-General of Korea], ed. Chōsen sōtokufu hensan kyōkasho: 1922-1928 [Textbooks compiled by theGovernment-General of Korea, 1922-1928]. Reprint. Tokyo: Ayumi Shuppan, 1985.
Hayashi Buichi. Chōsenkoku shinkei [True scenes from Korea]. Hayashi Kameko, 1892.
Mainichi Shimbun, August 9, 1945.
Nishikawa Kiyoshi, “The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea”, Sakura-no-hanaShuppansha, 2014.
Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun Chūsen-ban [Osaka Asahi Newspaper, Central Korean edition], March 6, 1940.
Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun Nansen-ban [Ōsaka Asahi Newspaper, Southern Korea Edition], January 18, 1938; March 30, 1939; November
21, 1939.
Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures, National Diet Library. Available online at http://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/.
Prince Ito and Crown Prince of Korea, Library of Congress Bain Collection.
Rekishi shashin, October 1933.
Shashin shūhō no. 22 (1938).
Sugi Ichirōbei, ed. Heigō kinen: Chōsen shashinchō [Photographs of Korea: Commemorating the annexation]. Shin Hantōsha, 1910.
Tōkai Tsūshinsha Chosabu, ed. Dai-Nihon gaichi shashin chō [ Photograph album of the colonies of the Empire of Japan]. Tōkai
Tsūshinsha, 1933.

Materials provided by:
Saitō Makoto Memorial Hall
The office of Takaichi Sanae, lawmaker in Japan’s House of Representatives
Alexander Turnbull Library Collections, Wellington, New Zealand (Provided by the Economic and Tourism Division of the City of
Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture)

This paper was translated by JIIA from Japanese into English with the author’s consent in 2021.
JIIA takes full responsibility for the translation

89

The last word: Interviews with a former civil servant at the Government-General of Korea