A South Korean’s unwanted war legacy from Japan
In 1944, he was abducted from his village by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II camp. In 2005, he learned he was mistakenly listed among Japan’s war dead at a Tokyo shrine.
For most of his life, Kim Hui-jong has kept what he considers a shameful secret. In 1944, as a teenager, he was abducted from his village in northern Korea by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II military camp on the island of Saipan.
It would take him a decade of marriage to tell his wife about his past. Kim, 86, still often dreams of the battlefield shelling that severely damaged his hearing and the taunts of his captors: “You Koreans are like canned meat; we can take you anywhere and use you as we see fit.”
He always considered his Japanese enslavement, and the two years he later spent as a U.S. prisoner of war, as a lifelong humiliation. Then, in 2005, Kim received a new insult he insists he still cannot bear: For decades, the former conscript learned, he has been counted among Japan’s war dead and, because of an administrative error, his name is listed at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni shrine. He could no longer remain silent.
Above: Kim Hui-jong, 86, of South Korea, has been trying to get Japan to remove his name from a list of that country’s World War II dead: “I never fought for the Japanese; I was a forced laborer.” (Matt Douma, For The Times / August 15, 2011)
——-This is awful. Yes, the relationship between South Korea and Japan has always been an extremely complicated one. As the American-born daughter of two South Korean immigrants, I’ve always known that. (If you don’t believe me, ask any Korean person what they think of the Dokdo Islands.) Kim Hui-Jong’s story breaks my heart.
