Korean Repatriation and Historical Memory in Postwar Japan: Remembering the Ukishima-Maru Incident at Maizuru and Shimokita
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Volume 18 | Issue 21 | Number 5 | Article ID 5509 | Nov 01, 2020 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Korean Repatriation and Historical Memory in Postwar Japan: Remembering the Ukishima-maru Incident at Maizuru and Shimokita Jonathan Bull, Steven Ivings return in two days for an interview and was told that in the meantime his report would be Abstract: This essay focuses on the historical translated. Eventually the SCAP officers found memory of Korean repatriation in postwar the report to be “entirely a hearsay account” Japan, by examining the commemoration of the and a second report submitted by Son Il on the Ukishima-maru incident in which thousands of date of his interview was found to be “differing forced laborers died when their ship sank after in detail” from the first. Rather than simply striking a mine. We show how local memory dismiss the case “an attempt was made to activists in Maizuru and Shimokita mobilised to impress upon Mr. Son Il the importance of, and present an alternative narrative to that on meaning of, evidence [underlined in original] display at the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial which would support his claims” and the Museum which overlooks Korean repatriation. officers further instructed him to submit signed It shows how despite limited means they were witness statements from survivors. Son Il duly able to build a network of memory activists that complied with these instructions, submitting transcends local and national borders. three accounts from survivors before the end of December 1945. These witness statements were, however, deemed to “contain no concrete evidence of a war crime” in a report (dated 1 Keywords: repatriation, postwar Japan, January 1946) submitted to the Investigation historical memory, memory activists, Koreans Division of the Legal Section of SCAP GHQ. in Japan, Maizuru, Shimokita, forced labour, Further examination by SCAP GHQ saw the Ukishima-maru case dismissed on 19 January 1946 citing “insufficient evidence for trial” (GHQ/SCAP Records, LS-39038). The incident on which Son Il’s claim was based Introduction has become known as the “Ukishima-maru incident” (Ukishima-maru jiken), a tragic event On 8 December 1945 Son Il, the chairman of in which a military transport vessel, the the Aomori Regional Office of the Korean Ukishima-maru, sank in Maizuru Bay (Kyoto Association in Japan (Zainihon Chōsen Renmei), prefecture) at approximately 5:20 p.m. on 24 visited the Hirosaki branch of the Supreme August 1945 having apparently hit a naval Command of the Allied Powers (SCAP) to lodge mine. The vessel had left Ōminato port on the a charge of war crimes. The written report he Shimokita peninsula (Aomori prefecture) bound submitted alleged the “deliberate sinking by for Pusan, Korea, on the evening of 22 August Japanese officials of a vessel containing several 1945, exactly one week after the emperor’s thousand Koreans.” Son Il was requested to radio broadcast announcing the imperial 1 18 | 21 | 5 APJ | JF rescript on surrender. The voyage wasvillage who came out on their boats having supposed to repatriate thousands of Korean heard the explosion. This local assistance is labourers and their families. Many among them confirmed in the testimonies submitted by Son had been forced to work on militaryIl, but they contradict the Japanese infrastructure projects across the Shimokita government’s official numbers. Instead the peninsula where they faced harsh conditions in testimonies suggest between 6,500 and 8,000 what was a rushed effort to fortify the area in were on board when the Ukishima-maru anticipation of the Asia-Pacific War coming to departed for Pusan and that approximately the Japanese main islands.1 6,000 perished—a death toll that would easily rank the Ukishima-maru incident among the greatest maritime disasters in history. Furthermore, they unequivocally concluded that it was a “brutal conspiracy […] planned systematically by the authorities of the Japanese Government” perhaps to erase evidence and memory of Korean forced labour (GHQ/SCAP Records, LS-39038). Though SCAP closed its investigation without lengthy consideration, conspiracy theories as to whether the incident was an accident or planned event persist, and besides the disputed numbers, several questions regarding the incident remain unanswered: Why did the Ukishima-maru call at Maizuru rather than head straight to Pusan? Why was the decision made to repatriate the Korean labourers from the Shimokita peninsula in haste, prior to the implementation of an official repatriation programme? The questions above and other ambiguities surrounding the Ukishima-maru incident have been thoroughly investigated by the late Kim Chanjong, a Korean journalist resident in Japan Map showing the sites mentioned in this (Kim 1984). It is not our intention to determine article and the course of the Ukishima- the historical facts surrounding the incident, as maru prior to its sinking those who have tried conclude that the remaining unanswered questions would probably require a full government According to the Japanese government the investigation. Instead, we seek to examine how Ukishima-maru left Ōminato port with 3,735 the Ukishima-maru incident has been Korean passengers and 250 Japanese officers remembered in Japan in the postwar period on board. At Maizuru 524 Korean and 25 through to the present, and to do so as a lens Japanese lives were lost because of thefrom which to better understand issues explosion and subsequent sinking of the vessel. surrounding the historical memory of Many of the survivors were apparently rescued postcolonial migration in Japan. In doing so we and aided by the people of a nearby fishing build on our previous research on the historical 2 18 | 21 | 5 APJ | JF memory of Japanese repatriation byactions (Tamanoi 2000). However, as Japan’s considering Korean repatriation, of which the ‘lost decade’ stretched into the 2000s and Ukishima-maru incident was probably the first China became more powerful, the relative state-organised example (Bull and Ivings 2019). openness that existed around the time of the In particular, we attempt to understand the 50-year anniversary of the end of the Asia- process by which Korean repatriation from Pacific War dissipated. Yasukuni Shrine in Japan—often referred to as deportation (sōkan) Tokyo increasingly became a touchstone for in Japanese—has come to be omitted from the diplomatic and national popular memory historical memory of postwar repatriation in skirmishes in East Asia. Since the 2010s, rising Japan despite the fact that the mass transfer of nationalism and hate speech have strained Koreans to their liberated homeland and of Japan’s relations with China and South Korea. Japanese from their former colonial empire Abe Shinzō’s second stint as Japan’s prime were intensely intertwined. In addition, we minister (2012-2020) was especially examine the activities and role of localprovocative as his government questioned the Japanese “memory activists” at Maizuru and Japanese military’s responsibility for organising Shimokita in recovering the local memory of the ‘comfort women’ system. His government this tragedy and organizing thealso continued to downplay the role of Korean commemoration of the victims, making up for forced labour in the Japanese empire, leading the silence on the subject in official narratives to worsening political and economic relations. and in the display of the Maizuru Repatriation In 2015 the discord spilled over into Japan’s Memorial Museum. In analysing these efforts, application for industrial heritage sites to we show how local Japanese memory activists receive recognition by UNESCO. The were able to transcend institutional constraints governments of South Korea and China and create a transnational historical memory strongly protested the application for failing to network. These efforts have provided aacknowledge the sites’ role in forced labour platform from which different Zainichi Korean (Underwood 2015). groups could collectively commemorate the tragedy. Following this introduction, we briefly outline the movement of Koreans in Japan and Such commemoration by activist groups is a throughout the empire in the context of the longstanding feature of Japanese war memories dismantling of the Japanese empire. Then, we though state-level initiatives have attracted the turn our attention to the Maizuru Repatriation majority of attention both in mass media and Memorial Museum, discussing how it has among researchers (Seraphim 2006).largely omitted non-Japanese experiences of Researchers have drawn attention to arepatriation. We argue that the current disinclination by successive Japanesedisplay’s overwhelming focus on the Japanese governments to atone for militarism and experience has nationalised the narrative of imperialism (Seaton 2007, Gluck 2007). At the postcolonial return migration despite the level of official commemoration, throughout the reality of multi-ethnic repatriation and the Cold War, the state avoided addressing the fate emphasis the Museum placed on the of Japanese who were in the colonies and universality of its themes in its successful bid to occupied territories when the empire collapsed have some of its documents inscribed in (Watt 2009). Following the Cold War’s end and UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” register. the death of Emperor Hirohito, the mid-1990s The remainder of the paper examines the was a period when several prominentcommemoration of the Ukishima-maru incident politicians tried to acknowledge thein both Maizuru—the