Introduction
The impulse that led to the research that resulted in this paper was to find out if a long-standing rumour about the Koreans in Second World War Philippines — that the Koreans were ‘more cruel’ than the Japanese — is supported by facts. Those who believe the rumour cannot substantiate it. Some who do not believe it argue that there were few Koreans in the Philippines during the war, while others assert that there were none at all.Footnote 1 Consulting Philippine history textbooks and other major history books has proven useless because they do not mention the Koreans at all.Footnote 2 Beyond the history texts, in works by specialists on the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, Koreans are mentioned only in passing. These writers debunk the allegations, but do not adequately argue against it, simply claiming that there were few Koreans in the Philippines during the war.
It is imperative to clarify this rumour because it is so widespread and has persisted from the 1950s to the present. Whenever Second World War atrocities are mentioned in the Philippines, the Koreans are blamed as the perpetrators and described as being ‘more cruel than the Japanese’, despite the absence of Koreans in most historical accounts of that period. Clarification would contribute to the removal of this negative image, if it is established that what is rumoured is not true. If the facts confirm the rumour, the negative image would be justified, but it would be based on real evidence. On the other hand, research may unearth a mixture of the confirmation of some aspects of the rumour and the denial of others. Whatever the outcome, it would contribute to a more accurate picture of the role and conduct of the Koreans during the war.
The urgency of verifying this rumour also lies in the growing closeness of present-day Philippine–South Korean relations, as seen in the increasing number of Koreans who come to the Philippines to learn English, to study or do research in universities, and to work or invest. As people-to-people relations between the two countries expand, knowledge of each other's history becomes relevant. It is best to anchor such knowledge on solid evidence rather than on hearsay.
The case of a graduate student from South Korea who came to Manila in 2010 to do research may be cited to stress the point. The student conducted interviews for her research on the Japanese Occupation, and one of the interviewees told her point blank that ‘it was the Koreans who were more cruel than the Japanese’. The Korean student narrated this experience to her Filipino adviser at the University of the Philippines, and asked if what she was told was true.Footnote 3 This is only one case, but it is not hard to imagine that it has happened before and will keep happening. And if asked if the rumour is true, where will one turn to for a credible and substantial answer?
There is a dearth of scholarship on the Koreans who were tried of war crimes in the Philippines. Aiko Atsumi names and gives voice to a few Koreans she was able to interview.Footnote 4 One of them was Kenyo Ohara, a soldier who served in the Philippines, and was convicted of a war crime and first imprisoned by the post-war US Military Commission in Manila, and then transferred to Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. Through Atsumi's interview with Ohara, we also get a glimpse of a senior Korean military officer who was also convicted by the US Military Commission in Manila, namely Shiyoku Kou. Atsumi writes that a third Korean was also tried by the Americans in Manila, but she does not name him.Footnote 5
Since Atsumi's book is largely based on interviews with former Korean prisoners of war, she could not give details about Kou, who had been found guilty and executed by the American war tribunal in Manila in 1946. Details about Kou are found in Shihei Yamamoto's account in Shiyoku Kou chujo no shokei [The execution of Lieutenant General Shiyoku Kou].Footnote 6 Yamamoto focuses on the life and upbringing of Kou as a Korean volunteer in the Japanese Imperial Army, however. In this book, Kou's time in the Philippines is insignificant and merely treated as the locale of his trial and hanging.
A sentiment common to both Atsumi's and Yamamoto's writings collides with the rumour. Both Atsumi and Yamamoto give the impression that the Koreans were recruited to the Japanese army against their will and that they were victims of Japanese imperialism. The suffering and hardship of the Koreans in the Japanese army and during their incarceration in Sugamo Prison are emphasised. Richard Connaughton et al. echo this sentiment.Footnote 7 Benito Legarda, Jr., does not express an equal degree of sympathy towards the Koreans, but he too emphasises that they were under Japanese command.Footnote 8 My impetus for analysing the rumour partly derives from this contrast between these written impressions and the rumour.
Yet Connaughton et al. do mention the Koreans in the context of this rumour, if only to debunk it. Since the book is about the battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945, the authors focus on the atrocities in Manila and omit those in other parts of the Philippines. The authors reject the rumour by saying that there were few Koreans with the occupying forces in the Philippines at the time, and these were labourers who were ‘treated like dirt [and] had no love for the Japanese’.Footnote 9 They acknowledge, however, that ‘there was one division formed in Korea that went to the Philippines in 1944 but it did not stay in Manila’.Footnote 10 And again, since the book's focus is Manila, nothing more is said about this Korean division that did not remain in the capital.
In the same vein, Legarda, Jr. mentions the Koreans and the rumour about them in the battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945. Legarda, Jr., too dismisses the rumour on the grounds that most of the Koreans were dockworkers.Footnote 11 He grants that there were a few Koreans among the camp guards and the Kempeitai (the military police), which can be read as implying that some atrocities may have been committed by Koreans, but exonerates them by saying ‘but they were under Japanese command’.Footnote 12
This small and fragmentary body of literature neither substantiates nor disproves the allegations about the conduct of Koreans in wartime Philippines. This article aims to: first, show evidence regarding the persistence and spread of the rumour about the Koreans in the Philippines during the Second World War being ‘more cruel’ than the Japanese; second, examine relevant archival evidence about the Koreans, focusing on three who were accused of war crimes; finally, it will analyse the rumour itself and reassess it in the light of documentary evidence.
The first aim of the paper, obviously, is to quench the thirst of any thinking person interested in substantiating a persistent allegation about the Koreans that has been floating around. The second aim is to fill a gap in the written history of the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines.
Heard by various people in various ways and places
My mother was 22 years old when the Japanese invaded the Philippines on 8 December 1941. In the mid-1950s, I clearly remember that mere mention of Japan or the Japanese would prompt her to utter the words ‘mas malupit ang mga Koreano kaysa mga Hapon’.
Ricardo Trota Jose, a historian who focuses on the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, has heard the same stories about the ‘cruel’ Koreans, and originally believed them to be factual.Footnote 13 He stopped believing the stories when he visited Japan in the mid-1980s and was told by Japanese war veterans and historians and other academics that it was not true; some of them suggested that it was perhaps some Japanese themselves who had started the rumour.
The rumour about the Koreans turns up in casual conversation with family, relatives, colleagues, friends and students when the topic is the Second World War. People I interviewed in connection with several previous studies volunteered such a rumour — even though they were not asked about Koreans. To complement such stories and to find out how widespread the rumour is, I conducted deliberate but informal and random interviews between 2009 and 2010. I also conducted two surveys. The aim of the first survey in 2009 was to find out how many had heard the rumour; the second survey in 2010 aimed to find out how many believed the rumour.
To begin with, my informal interviews found that the rumour appears throughout the Philippines. It is alive in Mindanao. An American professor of English was told about it wherever she went as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s. A Japanese Islamic Studies professor in her early sixties had often heard the rumour too. A Filipino faculty member and administrator in Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City told me that many respondents interviewed for her master's research said it was ‘the Koreans who did the atrocities’. Her father, a Second World War veteran, agreed. An American doctoral student doing fieldwork in Davao interviewed a Filipino administrator of Mindanao Kokusai Daigaku (Mindanao International University) about pre-war Japanese immigrants in the Philippines. In the course of that interview, the administrator volunteered the information that ‘actually, the Koreans and not the Japanese did the atrocities’.
In the Visayas, central Philippines, people I asked had heard it in Iloilo. A Filipino doctoral student in Japan remembers that in the late 1980s his high-school history teacher told him and his classmates that the Koreans were ‘more cruel’ than the Japanese. A Japanese now in his late sixties who had been a volunteer in his younger years for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Iloilo was often told the story by people there.
The rumour also persists in Luzon. A faculty member and administrator at Sophia University (Tokyo) often heard the rumour in Majayjay (a municipality in southern Luzon), at his field research site. Benedict Kerkvliet says that when he was conducting interviews in Nueva Ecija for his book on the Hukbalahap in the 1970s, he heard comments such as ‘it was the Koreans who did the atrocities’, or that the ‘Koreans were more cruel than the Japanese’. Kerkvliet, however, stresses that most of his interviewees still blame the Japanese for the atrocities. He adds that most of his interviewees were really very angry at the Japanese.Footnote 14 A Filipino consultant on veterans affairs at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC heard the rumour from his parents in Ilocos Norte. A Filipino woman immigrant in Honolulu, who was 18 years old during the Japanese Occupation, says ‘Korean soldiers were more cruel than Japanese soldiers’,Footnote 15 a fact, according to her, that is known to all. Asked for proof, she simply said that it was what people were saying then, including her neighbours in Sampaloc (a district in central Manila) and Cainta (in Antipolo City, Metro Manila), where her family was evacuated after the Japanese occupied Sampaloc.
At the birthday party of a friend who turned 50 on 6 March 2010, his former classmates, most of whom were children of war veterans, talked about the war. I asked them if they had heard the rumour about the Koreans during the war. Of the 10 at the table, six said yes, they had heard the rumour. At a gathering of Filipino students in Tokyo, I asked the same question and a doctoral student said she had heard it from her professor while studying for her master's degree at Ateneo de Manila University. In a research methods class, a second-year student, whose grandmother is Japanese, said her grandmother tells her that cruelties endured by the Filipinos during the war were done by the Koreans, not by the Japanese. To this, I replied, half in jest, that perhaps the Japanese residents in the Philippines spread the rumour, in order to save themselves from the revenge of Filipinos who had suffered at the hands of Japanese soldiers.Footnote 16 At a book launch, I asked a historian in her forties whether she had heard the rumour. In response, she told me that she was dating a Japanese man; once, in front of a former professor, her friends warned her about marrying a Japanese because of the war, but her former professor remarked that the Koreans had committed the atrocities, not the Japanese.
Last but not least, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a major newspaper in Manila, in co-operation with the Veterans Bank of the Philippines and the Philippine National Historical Commission, has been running a nationwide essay contest for the past three years on the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines for high-school students.Footnote 17 The students are allowed to be guided by their history teachers, but the essays should be based on interviews. A total of 90 submissions were received for the most recent contest (2011), and 54 made it to the finals. Out of the 54, eight essays mention the Koreans as being ‘more cruel’ than the Japanese.
To have a rough idea of how many have heard the rumour, I distributed questionnaires between April and May 2009. The respondents were 109 public and private high-school teachers taking enrichment courses at Ateneo de Manila University, as well as humanities and social sciences faculty members of the university, who were around for the summer courses (April and May are called summer in the Philippines).Footnote 18 A total of 82 (around 75 per cent) of the respondents said they have not heard the rumour; 27 (almost 25 per cent) said they have heard it — which this paper argues is significant enough to consider the rumour as widespread.
Equally significant is the evidence shown in informal conversations as well as more deliberate queries in unstructured interviews that the rumour has persisted since the 1950s. There is no evidence that it will stop, considering that it breeds in schools and universities.
How many believe the rumour?
Hearing or narrating a rumour is different from believing it. Some of my interviewees strongly believe the rumour. An example is a 48-year old economist who has heard the rumour from his mother and aunts, all of whom had experienced the war. He insists that his mother and his aunts should know because they had lived through the war. He says that his elders explained that the Koreans were cruel because they were lower-ranking soldiers while the Japanese were officers.
To find out how many believed the rumour, a second questionnaire was distributed between April and May 2010. A total of 225 students and 137 public and private high-school teachers were surveyed in their classrooms while attending a course at Ateneo de Manila University. The professors in charge of the classes were requested to distribute and collect the questionnaires, thus assuring a high rate of return. From the students, 170 out of 225, or 75 per cent of the answered questionnaires were returned, while all 137 from the teachers were returned.
Among the students, 19.4 per cent think it is true. Among the teachers, an even higher percentage, almost 25 per cent, think that the story is true. This is quite a large percentage and has great potential to increase the number of those who believe in the negative image of the Koreans during the war because the respondents are educators.
Archival evidence about the Koreans in wartime Philippines
Extant archival records prove the presence of Korean soldiers and civilians in the Philippines during the Second World War. Records of the war crimes trials conducted by the US Military Commission in Manila in the aftermath of the Japanese surrender provide additional information disclosed by the witnesses, prosecution and defence.
Between 4 January and 17 October 1945, the strength of the Japanese Imperial Army in North Luzon (La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Nueva Vizcaya, Mountain Province, Tayabas, Isabela, and Cagayan) facing the US Armed Forces in the Philippines, Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL) was estimated at 85,044. The great majority of these, 84,034, were Japanese. The remaining 1,010 comprised of Taiwanese (809), Koreans (144) and Javanese (57). USAFIP-NL reports estimate that it killed 52,033 while 32,001 were captured and made POWs.Footnote 19
A weekly report for 26 October 1945 from the Luzon POW Camp No. 1 in Cabanatuan shows the nationality and number of POWs as follows: Japanese, 54,929; Formosans [Taiwanese], 4,481; Koreans, 821 male and 491 female; others, 59.Footnote 20 We will return to these figures shortly, but it should be noted that they should not be compared with the number of prisoners captured by USAFIP-NL mentioned above, because the POW Camp No. 1 (Cabanatuan) also housed prisoners from other parts of the Philippines.
The same weekly report gives the number of (civilian) internees at the same camp (see Table 1).
Table 1: Nationality of internees at Luzon Prisoner of War Camp No. 1, Cabanatuan (26 Oct. 1945)
Source: National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, RG 331, entry 1362, box 2012, location 290/13/4/01; Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers: Legal Section, Investigation Division, Manila Branch, Miscellaneous Files.
A report for 4 December 1945 from the same Luzon POW Camp No. 1 gives figures for POWs and civilian internees (see Table 2).
Table 2: Nationality of POWs and internees at Luzon Prisoner of War Camp No. 1, Cabanatuan (4 Dec. 1945)
Source: National Archives Administration, Washington, DC, RG 331, entry 1362, box 2012, location 290/13/4/01; Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers: Legal Section, Investigation Division, Manila Branch, Miscellaneous Files.
A 16 December 1945 report shows the nationality of the internees (see Table 3).
Table 3: Nationality of internees at Luzon Prisoner of War Camp No. 1, Cabanatuan (16 Dec. 1945)
Source: National Archives Administration, Washington, DC, RG 331, entry 1362, box 2012, location 290/13/4/01; Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers: Legal Section, Investigation Division, Manila Branch, Miscellaneous Files.
In Leyte, a report on 5 February 1946 about POWs being held for war crimes gives the following figures: [Japanese] officers, 296; [Japanese] enlisted men, 2,354; [Japanese] civilians, 83; Formosans [Taiwanese], 3; Koreans, 110.Footnote 21 In Mindanao, a staff study of the Japanese operations there reported that about 10 per cent of the personnel in each unit, approximately 500, were Korean ‘volunteers’.Footnote 22
For the purpose of this article, the reports above may be summarised by focusing only on the Korean POWs, civilian internees, and overall estimates for the number of Koreans in the Japanese army in the Philippines. Internees were civilians, while POWs were members of the military. Captured Korean civilians attached to the military were also classified as POWs.
Table 4 is a summary of the number of Korean POWs and internees based on the various reports from Luzon POW Camp No. 1 (Cabanatuan) and from Leyte. No report is available for POWs and internees in Mindanao, but it may be surmised that the Koreans captured in Mindanao were sent to Leyte. (Kenyo Ohara, discussed below, was arraigned in Mindanao, but imprisoned in Leyte.) This supposition is supported by the absence of reports about the number of Korean soldiers in Leyte; the Japanese army did not send Korean contingents to Leyte, or any place in the Visayas. And yet, 110 captured Koreans are listed in Leyte, as reported in 1946. They may be part of the 500 sent to Mindanao.
Table 4: Summary: Estimated number of Koreans in the Japanese army in the Philippines
Sources: US Army Forces in the Philippines, Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL), ‘Reports of Operations and other Papers, Vol. 1’, Historical Bulletin, 12, nos. 1–4 (1968); National Archives Administration, Washington, DC, RG 331, entry 1362, box 2012, location 290/13/4/01; Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers: Legal Section, Investigation Division, Manila Branch, Miscellaneous Files.
Given the figures in Table 4, the report for 26 October 1945 (Table 1) may be dismissed as inaccurate and confusing because in that early report the number of Korean POWs is much larger than the estimated total number of Koreans in the Japanese army in the Philippines. It is suggested here to make observations only from the two reports for December 1945 (Tables 2 and 3) and the report for 5 February 1946 on POWs being held for war crimes in Leyte. Focusing only on POWs — on the assumption that they were the ones, not the internees, who were accused of crimes — by February 1946, there were approximately 120 Korean POWs (10 + 110). The report for 16 December gives a lower figure of POWs because by this time, many had been cleared, repatriated to Korea, or perhaps died. As reported on 4 December, there were 502 civilians attached to the military who became POWs. Hence, out of the 644 Koreans in the Japanese army in the Philippines at the end of the war, 502 became POWs.
Overall, there were very few Koreans, military or civilian at the time — just over 600. This corroborates the dismissal of the rumour (that the Koreans could not have been the perpetrators of atrocities) by Connaughton et al., Legarda, Jr., and others. The summary shows that the majority of the Koreans in the Japanese army in the Philippines were civilians attached to the military (as prison guards, interpreters, labourers, etc.). The number of POWs vis-à-vis the estimated total number of Koreans in the Japanese army also indicates that most of them surrendered to the Americans rather quickly, as observed in the literature.Footnote 23
Korean war criminals
Out of over 600 Korean POWs, 13 were tried by the US Military Commission in Manila.Footnote 24 Of the 13, only two were convicted. One, a Korean of Japanese citizenship, was sentenced to death by hanging. His Japanese name was Shiyoku Kou and his Korean name was Hong Sa-ik. Another Korean convicted and sentenced to 10-year imprisonment on 13 June 1946 was Kenyo Ohara, whose Korean name was Chui Wong-yon.Footnote 25
Lieutenant General Shiyoku Kou
While there were few Koreans amongst the Japanese forces in wartime Philippines, their presence and role cannot be dismissed as insignificant. One reason for this is because of the role and trial of Shiyoku Kou. Kou was sent to the Philippines on 9 March 1944. Unlike in China and peninsular Southeast Asia, where Koreans had been dispatched since the beginning of the war, in the case of the Philippines, Koreans appeared in prison and internment camps only in the last 10 months or so of the war. Kou was then a major general in the Japanese Imperial Army; in October 1944 he was promoted to lieutenant general.
From March 1944 to January 1945, Kou was in charge of all Japanese POW and civilian internment camps for Allied and Filipino prisoners in the Philippines. He had his headquarters at the Far Eastern University in Manila. All the crimes attributed to him were in connection with his responsibilities for or in the vicinity of the following: Cabanatuan POW Camp (Luzon POW Camp No. 1)Footnote 26; the POW camps at Davao, consisting of Davao Penal Colony, Lasang Air Field, and Lincanan Air Field; Sakura Detached Hospital Camp at Fort McKinley (south of Manila, now Bonifacio Global City), Las Piñas POW branch camp; Old Bilibid POW Camp and Hospital; University of Santo Tomas (UST) Civilian Internment Camp; Los Baños Civilian Internment Camp; Baguio Civilian Internment Camp; Pasay Elementary School POW branch camp; and Palawan Air Field POW branch camp.Footnote 27
Most of the guards at these camps were either Taiwanese or Korean.Footnote 28 The guards in Cabanatuan and Old Bilibid Prison, as well as those on board the ill-fated Oryoku Maru, were all Taiwanese.Footnote 29
On 9 October 1945, at the New Bilibid Prison in Rizal (now Muntinlupa Prison), Kou, after having been duly sworn, testified and responded to the question regarding his full name: ‘Shiyoku Kou. I am of Korean descent and a Japanese national (Shiyoku Kou, watashi wa Chosen shusshin de, Nihon kokumin de arimas).’Footnote 30
Kou was accused of violating the laws of war, specifically, the Geneva Convention, for ‘permitting and sanctioning the commission of brutal atrocities and other high crimes against’ POWs and non-combatant civilian internees, and ‘unlawful and willful disregard, neglect and failure to discharge his duties or command’.Footnote 31 He was also accused of violating the laws of war in connection with the inhuman treatment of POWs who were transferred from one camp in the Philippines to another. The charge served to him on 6 February 1946 described his crimes in gruesome detail.Footnote 32 In addition there were charges against him in connection with his order to transfer around 1,639 American POWs and civilian internees from Cabanatuan to Japan on board the Oryoku Maru.Footnote 33
Kou entered a plea of ‘not guilty’, but did not testify.Footnote 34 Rather, the prosecution used the transcript of the testimony Kou had given in the earlier trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita in Manila. In that trial, Kou was a witness neither for the prosecution nor the defence, but for the Military Commission. Kou was in the 14th Army of General Yamashita, and in his position as commanding general of all POW camps and civilian internment camps in the Philippines, he was asked questions about the conditions and treatment of POWs and internees.Footnote 35
Kou's Korean ethnicity was mentioned only on four occasions throughout the trial. The first time was when he introduced himself as an ethnic Korean and a Japanese citizen.Footnote 36 The second occasion was when a prosecution witness narrated that a Japanese friendly to POWs in Los Baños confided to him that the commander of the camp was ‘a Korean who had been born and raised in Japan and got his rank in the army by doing the work that other Japanese officers wouldn't do, such as the position he was in there’.Footnote 37 Third, the defence capitalised on Kou's ethnic identity and argued that he was not really in command because being Korean, ‘he was resented by his [Japanese] subordinates [and] he was looked down upon by the [Japanese] officers over him’. The defence argued that on these counts, Kou should not be found guilty by reason of command responsibility.Footnote 38 The fourth occasion was when the prosecution rebutted and argued that the defence:
for the first time, brought out the position of the accused and dwelt to some extent on the fact that he is a Korean and put in our minds that he was not well thought of by the Japanese nor trusted. The record simply shows that he was a Japanese national, a graduate of the Japanese Military Academy, a brigade commander in North China and an instructor.Footnote 39
The verdict was guilty on the principle of command responsibility and the sentence was death by hanging. Two-thirds of the members of the commission concurred in each finding. Kou was hanged in September 1946.Footnote 40
In the POW and civilian internment camps where crimes were committed, the highest-ranking military officer responsible was an ethnic Korean. It is only in these camps and only under the specific principle of command responsibility that facts support the rumour that the Koreans were ‘more cruel’ than the Japanese. And this was one Korean, named Shiyoku Kou.
Lance Corporal Kenyo Ohara
The other Korean convicted by the post-war US Military Commission in the Philippines was Lance Corporal Kenyo Ohara (Chui Wong-yon). Ohara was born and raised in North Korea and had only six years of schooling. He joined the 44th unit of the Japanese Imperial Army in Korea on 10 December 1941.Footnote 41 He must have been one of the 20,723 Koreans who volunteered to join the army between 1938 and 1943.Footnote 42 In June 1944 he was dispatched to the Philippines and landed in Mindanao.
In Mindanao, Ohara was with the 30th Division, 77th Regiment under Mikami Koe. Mikami and 12 members of his unit, including Ohara, were accused of participating in the killing of six non-combatant Filipinos near Langasian, Mindanao, on or about 16 September 1945. They were arraigned on 26 November 1946 in Manila.Footnote 43 The American Military Commission presented its findings:
The Filipino party [those killed by Mikami's men] carried “surrender” leaflets and a pass, written in the Japanese language …. However, Mikami and his men were suspicious of these Filipinos and believed that the surrender leaflets were forgeries and that the Filipinos were spies.Footnote 44 Mikami … decided to execute the Filipinos: 1 man, 2 women, and 3 children. No discussion was had about keeping these people prisoners, and not one in the group suggested that any of them be spared.
Mikami's order of disposition of the victim by his various units was that the First Company would kill the man, the Sanitation Water Purification unit would kill the children, the Communication Unit would kill the young woman, and the Headquarters Company would kill the elder of the two women.Footnote 45
A member of the group killed the Filipino man; another one killed the two children; two killed the younger woman and the baby; and Ohara killed the older woman. In all, six non-combatant Filipinos were killed by five of Mikami's men. In addition, three were ordered by Mikami to give the order to kill, and four men guarded or went along with the killers.Footnote 46
During the arraignment, Ohara was asked his name and residence. He gave his name and stated that his residence was in Korea.Footnote 47 During the trial, Ohara said Mikami gave the order thus: ‘Ogawa, Ohara, members of the battalion headquarters, you shall take this elderly woman because she is a spy. Pretend that you are taking her to dig potatoes and then kill her.’Footnote 48 Ohara said he replied ‘yes, sir.’Footnote 49
The tribunal's verdict was death by hanging for Mikami, life imprisonment for the three who gave the order to kill upon Mikami's orders, 20-year imprisonment for the five who actually did the killing, and 10-year imprisonment for the four who stood guard. Upon review, the sentence of 20-year imprisonment was reduced to 10, and the sentence of 10-year imprisonment was reduced to five.
Thus, Ohara, originally given a 20-year sentence for killing the older woman, was finally given a 10-year sentence. After imprisonment in the Philippines, he was transferred to Sugamo Prison in Tokyo. On 17 March 1953 he was released for good behaviour, after serving his sentence for seven years and six months.
Ohara killed a non-combatant old woman upon the order of his Japanese commander. The woman was one of the six non-combatants, including children, killed by five of the Japanese commander's men, all of whom, except Ohara, were Japanese. Ohara's ethnic identity, however, was only hinted at when he stated during the arraignment that his residence was in Korea. Throughout the trial, he was simply one of the Japanese soldiers under Mikami. One killer of Korean ethnicity against four Japanese killers: in this incident the rumour that there were more cruel Koreans than Japanese is not supported by the facts.
Ihara Mangaku
On 4 July 1946 American rule over the Philippines officially ended upon the granting of independence. Thus, the trial of the remaining accused Japanese fell into the hands of the newly sovereign Philippine government. From August 1947 to December 1949, the Philippine Military Commission conducted trials.Footnote 50
One of the accused who fell under the jurisdiction of the Philippine tribunal was a Korean, Yun Man-hak, whose Japanese name was Ihara Mangaku (also pronounced as Bangaku). On 20 October 1947, when Ihara was about to be tried, he wrote a petition to the National War Crimes Office (NWCO) that a Korean lawyer and interpreter be sent to Manila to participate in the war crimes trial on his behalf on the grounds that he could not understand Japanese.Footnote 51 Nothing is known about the result of this petition.
On 14 January 1948, Captain Nicanor Maronilla-Seva, Chief of the Prosecution Division, wrote to the NWCO to reject the petition of Ihara's defence lawyer that Ihara be released. Evidently, the defence lawyer had submitted a petition that Ihara be released because upon the surrender of Japan, Ihara had recovered his Korean nationality and was therefore no longer under the jurisdiction of the court, whose authority was to try Japanese accused of war crimes.Footnote 52
Maronilla-Seva denied the petition on the grounds that Korea was part of the Japanese Empire during the war, and that Ihara had been a Japanese citizen when he committed the crimes. The separation of Korea from Japan at the end of the war was irrelevant to the case, in Maronilla-Seva's opinion. Again, nothing is known of what happened next.
Rousseau, in his discussion of the moral power of the state or the community to imbue its members with a certain type of morality, says that ‘war … is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizen, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders’.Footnote 53 Ihara's defence lawyer tried to capitalise on the timing of his client's trial: by then Korea was already independent of Japan, and he was able to assert that his client was no longer a Japanese citizen.
As mentioned, Atsumi writes about a third Korean who was tried by the Americans in the Philippines, without providing his name. The records show that, indeed, there was a third Korean accused of a war crime, but he was not tried by the Americans. This must have been Ihara, who was supposed to be tried by the Philippine tribunal, but it is not known whether he was actually tried.Footnote 54
Assessing the rumour
The rumour, when stated in Tagalog, usually goes ‘mas malupit ang mga Koreano kaysa mga Hapon’ (the Koreans were more cruel than the Japanese). This is more often heard than a variation of it, which goes, ‘the atrocities were committed by the Koreans’. The more common statement is definitely comparative, but its meaning is not clear. ‘Mas malupit ang mga Koreano kaysa mga Hapon’ can mean the Koreans committed more atrocities than the Japanese, and therefore, they were more cruel. If this is what it means, it is a quantitative comparative statement. However, it can also mean that the acts committed by the Koreans were more cruel than the acts committed by the Japanese. For example, torturing an enemy before shooting him is usually considered more cruel than just shooting him. If this is what it means, the statement is a comparison of the gravity of cruelty. For want of a better term, this is called a qualitative statement in this article.
To find out how those who have heard the rumour understand it, the 2010 survey which aimed to find out how many believed the quantitative rumour (question 2: Do you think the story that there were more cruel Koreans in the Philippines during World War II is true?) also asks if they believe the qualitative rumour (question 3: Do you think the story that the atrocities committed by the Koreans were more cruel than the atrocities committed by the Japanese during World War II in the Philippines is true?). Among the 137 teachers, 28 (20.4 per cent) believe the qualitative rumour. This is six less than the 34 who believe the quantitative rumour. But there is an overlap; that is, those who responded ‘yes’ to question 2 also responded ‘yes’ to question 3, which means, they are not sensitive to the difference between the two questions. Among the 170 students who returned the questionnaire, 27 (15.9 per cent) responded ‘yes’ to question 3 (qualitative question) and 33 (19.4 per cent) responded ‘yes’ to question 2 (quantitative). Similar to the teachers, there is an overlap of the answers for the two questions.
To further probe if those who responded ‘yes’ to question 3 understand that it is different from question 2, question 4 was asked: ‘Who, do you think, committed the following atrocities during World War II? Please check the column that corresponds to your answer.’ The atrocities listed were death march, slapping, rape, throwing babies in the air and making them fall on a sword, recruiting comfort women, mass massacre.Footnote 55 The respondent could tick ‘Japanese’, ‘Koreans’, ‘both Japanese and Koreans’, or ‘I do not know’. Of the 28 teachers, 14 attributed only to Koreans mass massacre, slapping, rape, and comfort women. The other 14 checked ‘Japanese and Koreans’. This shows that the ‘yes’ to the qualitative question cannot be taken seriously. On the other hand, the students are more consistent in that all the 27 who answered ‘yes’ to question 3 attributed only to Koreans baby throwing, comfort women, rape, slapping, and mass massacre.
The result of the survey does not definitely show that the comparative rumour is quantitative, but it shows an inclination towards it. This interpretation is reinforced by the statements of Legarda, Jr., and Connaughton, et al., mentioned above, that the rumour is that atrocities in Manila were done by the Koreans. Theirs is not a comparative statement, but it is quantitative, in the sense that only Koreans are being blamed; no Japanese; all against none. Thus, the rumour may be restated as ‘more Koreans than Japanese committed cruel acts in the Philippines during the Second World War’, or any variation that expresses a quantitative comparison.
The documentary sources cited above clearly show that there were very few Koreans in the Philippines during the Second World War — just over 600. Moreover, only 13 Koreans were tried by the Americans in Manila and only two were actually convicted. The documentary sources do not support the rumour.
Conclusion
By interrogating the veracity of the rumour and narrating the circumstances and background to the trials of Kou and Ohara, this article has filled a gap in the published history of the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines. In doing so, the article may contribute to mitigating the pervasiveness and persistence of the rumour, but more importantly, it may inspire further research using various analytical frameworks.
The instinctive question is who started the rumour and why, but this detective-like question is hard to pursue. First, it is difficult to design an ingenious-enough approach and methodology that would definitely identify the originator or originators of this rumour. Second, it would be difficult to pursue the question without the assumption that the originator had malicious intent.
It would be promising to conduct research that uses the framework of postcolonial historical memory. A relevant discourse would be the historians' and the ordinary peoples' perceptions not only of the relevance of the Japanese Occupation to the present, but also the relevance of specific policies and actions of particular historical agents, such as POWs, Taiwanese and Korean prison guards, and the translators, interpreters, witnesses, prosecutors and defence lawyers in the military tribunals held after the end of the Second World War.
It would also be pertinent to examine ethnicity and citizenship in wartime Philippines. A challenging and fruitful discourse could focus on the perceptions of the Taiwanese and the Koreans (who were both Japanese citizens or, rather, subjects during the Second World War) in the Philippines. This article, not unlike the published history of the Philippines, neglects the Taiwanese subjects of the Japanese empire and even though it discusses the Koreans, it does so only within its limited aims. Given that there were many Taiwanese working as prison and camp guards contemporaneously with the Koreans, one relevant area of research would be to investigate the interaction between the Taiwanese and the local overseas Chinese population of the Philippines.
