Yi Hak-Nae and the Burma–Thailand Railway
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Volume 19 | Issue 15 | Number 1 | Article ID 5612 | Aug 01, 2021 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Yi Hak-nae and the Burma–Thailand Railway Gavan McCormack known during the war and during his trials by his Japanese name, Hiromura Kakurai. Now aged in his nineties, Yi is the last survivor of 148 Koreans convicted of war crimes in the Allied trials that followed the East Asian and Pacific wars and continued to 1947. His story, published by Reuters in 2020, was headed ‘The Survivor: Last Korean War Criminal in Japan Wants Recognition’.1 Yi, tried by an Australian court in Singapore, was first found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death. Similarly convicted, twenty-three others were in due course executed. Yi’s sentence, however, was commuted to twenty years’ imprisonment. He was transferred in 1951 from Singapore’s Changi prison to Tokyo’s Sugamo, and eventually released in 1956, after ten years in prison. The guilty verdict cast a shadow over his subsequent life. Following the Reuters account on 5 August, the story was retold in Japanese two days later, introduced by Yi himself on the NHK Morning Yi Hak-nae, 1947 and 2007 show to a nationwide television audience, there (Hankyoreh, 2007) focusing not so much on the ‘war crimes’ and the allegations of brutality as on the injustice of the discriminatory treatment afforded to ‘non- August memories Japanese’ former convicted ‘war criminals’ (senpan) after the war.2 On 14 August the daily August in Japan is a time of remembrance—of Tokyo shimbun carried a further story focusing family dead (honoured in the festival of Obon) on that problem and on the movement Yi had and of war dead (those of Hiroshima and long spearheaded demanding of the Japanese Nagasaki, in particular). Seventy-five years government equal treatment for non-Japanese after the end of the war, the ranks of those who (Korean) and Japanese ex-prisoners.3 At around remember it have grown thin, but in August the same time, Japan’s monthly journalSekai 2020 one story caught my eye. It was the story published an interview with Yi and an article of Yi (or Lee) Hak-nae, born in the then addressing his case by a leading scholar in the Japanese colony of Chosen (Korea) in 1925 and field of war and treatment of prisoners.4 1 19 | 15 | 1 APJ | JF I researched and wrote about theChosen. Work commenced in November 1942. Burma–Thailand railway and the Yi Hak-nae case almost thirty years ago,5 so these stories The task was hard enough, given the jungle and in this August month of remembering, seventy- mountain conditions, but it was made even five years since the war’s end, drove me to harder by the early and unusually severe onset reflect once again: what was theof the monsoon and the afflictions that ravaged Burma–Thailand railway? Why was a Korean, Yi the workforce (cholera, malaria, dysentery, Hak-nae, working there as a POW camp guard? beriberi, ulcers). In February 1943 the How had he been punished and on what projected construction time was cut from grounds? What ‘recognition’ does he seek, and twelve months to eight and a ‘speedo’ with what right? In pondering these questions, campaign was launched that forced prisoners I also felt that it was time to pay some attention to work longer days with less rest. As the pace to the recent work of Australian military was stepped up, more than 12,000 Allied historians on the Australian war-crimes trials, prisoners died, including 2646 of about 13,000 notably resulting in the 2016 publication of a Australians, and a much greater but unknown substantial tome on the subject.6 number of romusha. They died of starvation, exhaustion, illness (cholera in particular) and general ill-treatment. There was said to have been one death for every sleeper laid for the Building the railway line. At Hintok construction camp (adjacent to the infamous Hellfire Pass and about 150 During the crucial war years of 1942–43, kilometres from Banpong), where Yi was one of Japan’s Imperial Army command attached high six Korean civilian camp guards, about 100 of priority to the construction of a railway linking 800 prisoners died. On the camp’s worst days Thailand to Burma (as Myanmar was then in mid-1943, that meant up to six each day. known). The ‘Burma–Thailand Railway’, crossing 414.9 kilometres of jungle andNo sooner was the line opened, in October mountain terrain between Ban Pong in1943, than it was smashed by Allied bombing. Thailand (about 88 kilometres from Bangkok) Few trains ever ran on the line, and those that and Thanbyuzayat in Burma, was designed to did carried defeated, wounded and sick open a secure overland route for the transport Japanese troops back after the Battle of Imphal of troops and supplies to Burma for the war in India (which commenced in March 1944). against British India. In Australia in particular, once the war ended It was Japan’s first large-scale, multinational and POWs returned home, war-crime trials, engineering and construction project. Awith their stories of forced heavy labour, massive labour force was organised. Two beatings, general ill-treatment, hunger and regiments of the Imperial Japanese Army, some disease, fed bitter, lasting negative images of 10,000 men, were assigned around 55,000 Japan. In 1991, my Australian National Allied POWs from the roughly 250,000 who had University (ANU) colleague Hank Nelson, a fallen into Japanese hands since war began in specialist on the war experience in Australia, December 1941, plus 70,000 or so locally and I, a modern Japanese historian, together recruited civilian Southeast Asian (Tamil with Utsumi Aiko, a Japanese academic Indian, Burmese, Thai, Malay)romusha specialist on the war and Japan’s relations with (labourers), and even a squad of 300 elephants, its Asian neighbours, convened a conference in for work in the jungle.7 To guard the prisoners Canberra that sought to bring together as Japan recruited some 3000 Koreans from many survivors as possible, i.e. including 2 19 | 15 | 1 APJ | JF formerly hostile parties, to reflect on the treated prisoners of war’—in effect, guilty of episode across the gulf of half a century. mass murder—Yi was sentenced to death. His defence counsel petitioned the court and in Notable former Australian POWs included October his sentence was commuted to life Edward (‘Weary’) Dunlop (1907–93), Tom Uren imprisonment. (1921–2015) and Hugh Clarke (1919–96). Dunlop was already a distinguished surgeon Yi’s trial was marked by multiple irregularities, and widely revered national figure, Uren a but the overwhelming one was the assumption prominent politician and former deputy prime that he had been ‘Camp Commandant’, himself minister, and Clarke a highly regarded novelist. responsible for the ‘appalling conditions’. It From the ‘other’ side just the Korean, ‘civilian was a major mistake that should have been auxiliary’ or gunzoku,Yi Hak-nae, confronted corrected at the outset. Because guards such and sought forgiveness from and reconciliation as Yi were the principal point of contact with his former charges. The book of this between prisoners and camp authorities they conference was published in English in 1993 tended to be seen as responsible, but they had and in Japanese in 1994. zero control over the conditions of the camp, their status was lower than a private and they The trials were themselves subjected to multiple abuses and discrimination from the Japanese military. In 1946–47, Australia conducted twenty-three Tasked with forcing POWs to work on the line war-crimes trials in Singapore, with sixty-two construction, and under tremendous pressure defendants. It found eighteen guilty and from the Japanese army camp command to sentenced them to death, acquitted eleven, and meet daily prisoner work norms, Yi had to sentenced an additional thirty-three to varying maximize the labour force, while Dunlop, then prison terms. Yi was tried on 18 and 20 March a 36-year-old Australian army surgeon and the 1947. The charges were that during part of the senior prisoner commander, had to minimize it, period March to August 1943 Yi had ‘occupied the position of Camp Commandant’ and during doing what he could to prevent prisoners who that period: were ill or enfeebled from starvation or disease from being allocated to work detachments. The prisoners of war lived under the most appalling conditions, shelter andFor some weeks in March-April 1943, in the accommodation were totally inadequate and absence or illness of regular Japanese most primitive. They were also deniedauthorities, Yi did indeed serve as acting camp sufficient food, medical supplies, clothing and commandant, but he was obliged to implement footwear… [while being] forced to perform policy, not determine it. Though Yi was charged heavy manual labour on the railway line for over matters to do with his having ‘occupied which they were totally unfit by reason of their the position of Camp Superintendent’, a status physical and medical condition… As a result of that continued until August, in his account this treatment sickness and disease among the (discussed below) Colonel Dunlop made no prisoners of war became rife and by the end of such claim. He referred only to the very April 43.2% of the camp strength were in different charge, that in April-May 1943 ‘while hospital…out of 800 Australian prisoners of war in charge of works parade arrangements who went into the camp over 100 of them died (italics added) [Yi was] forcing doctors to there, and that the accused was responsible for discharge patients from hospital to work’.