21. Postwar Japanese activity in South Korea Although Japan did not put up much of a fight in South Korea after the war, they put up more of a fight there than they did in North Korea. Without saying it directly, declassified U.S. government documents blame Japan for at least some of the instability in South Korea after the war. “It would greatly assist the occupation to transport the Japanese Army home at an early date,” said the U.S. Army. “Nothing approaching stable conditions in Korea can be established until the Japanese Army and most of the Japanese population have been removed to Japan.” After the end of the war, there were ferries which moved the Japanese in Korea back to Japan and the Koreans in Japan back to Korea. This process of repatriation was important, according to the U.S. Army. “The exchange [of Koreans and Japanese] does reduce the capacity in each area for making trouble,” they said. But even after that exchange, Japan still had a certain amount of influence in South Korea. The U.S. government, though they may have been able to repatriate most of the Japanese living in Korea, they could not have repatriated all of them. Some Japanese undoubtedly went into hiding and managed to elude the American authorities. More importantly, though most Koreans did not have fond memories of Japanese colonial rule, there were still some Koreans who preferred Japan over the West. America wanted to eliminate them. This was the second reason why the Soviets and Americans incited the people of South Korea to revolt. It gave the U.S. government a pretext to kill all the Koreans who had any connection to Japan. Rather than allow those Koreans to lurk in the shadows, America hoped to draw them out into the open. America hoped to make them angry enough to protest. And once they began to protest, America would kill them. References The quotes come from page 5 of this War Department document: trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/korea/large/documents/pdfs/kr-6-15.pdf
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 02:13:13 +0000
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