Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper traces Japan's postwar rebirth. It highlights Japan's extended presence on the Korean Peninsula fo;;owing its surrender to the Allied forces in min-August 1945. This extension began with an exchange of correspondence between general Kosuku in Seoul and General Hodge in Okinawa.

Paper long abstract:

On September 1, 1945, a short two weeks following the Japanese emperor’s “jewel voice” surrender speech, General Kosuku Yoshio, head of the 17th Japanese Army in Korea, contacted U.S. General John Hodge, Commanding Officer of the XXIV Corps then in Okinawa but soon to travel to Seoul to direct the U.S. occupation of southern Korea. As the Soviet armies were quickly advancing south from the Manchurian border the Japanese officer informed Hodge that “there are Communist agitators among the Koreans who are plotting to take advantage of the situation to disturb the peace and order here.” Hodge directed the Japanese that they were to maintain control over the peninsula until U.S. forces arrived; he promised to have leaflets dropped over the Peninsula to inform the Korean people of this directive. This directive was one of a number of clues that Japan would be positioned by the United States to maintain its superior position among states in the Northeast Asian region. Prior to this, U.S.-based Japanese objected to rumors that Japan would be offered the chance to surrender under negotiated, rather than unconditional, terms, and that the emperor would be treated leniently rather than as a war criminal. Even after the occupation of southern Korea commenced the Korean people saw signs that they interpreted as the U.S. directing more favorable treatment toward the defeated Japanese military than toward the liberated Korean people. This presentation argues that U.S. attitudes toward the enemy Japanese softened as its relations with its soon to be former ally, the Soviet Union, hardened, even as the battles waged in the Pacific. To what extent did it suggest Japan’s importance to combat an anticipated “cold war” with the Soviet Union and the territory it would soon occupy in northern Korea?

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Can legal trials constitute war time violence? In June 1943, James Bradley escaped from the Thai Burma Railway construction site, only to be captured and stand trial for attempted escape. Following a year of brutal interrogations and incarcerations he was sentenced to 8 years of penal servitude.

Paper long abstract:

In 1943, Lieutenant James Bradley and four other men emerged from a thick jungle following a dangerous escape attempt from the Thai-Burma Railway construction site. They were captured by Burmese hunters and quickly found themselves in Kempeitai custody. Facing brutal interrogations and harsh detainment in Moulmein Jail and Outram Road Prison, they were in the end hospitalized. Before long, however, emaciated, the men were loaded onto trucks and brought to Raffles College in Singapore. There, in 1944, they stood trial at the court-martial of the 1602 Oka-Unit over their alleged crime of fleeing detainment, with the Indian civilian who accompanied them being charged with assisting escape. The men were sentenced to multiple years of penal servitude, but managed to survive the war.

Japanese attitudes towards attempted escape have been established as early as the First Sino-Japanese war during which provisions were laid out to severely punish escapees due to fears over counterintelligence. This attitude was later formally put into law when, in 1905, the Japanese government issued its Law Pertinent to the Punishment of POWs. Despite being a departure from the 1899 Hague convention, this law formed the basis for many trials against enemy soldiers during the Russo-Japanese and the First World War. Then, in 1943, prompted by a sudden influx of enemy combatants within their captivity and a desire to maintain POW camps with as little personnel as possible, the Japanese government revised the law to define new crimes, streamline language, and increase punishments. As a result, allied soldiers faced long prison sentences and even capital punishment for their attempted escapes.

This paper considers whether legal trials could constitute a form of wartime violence through the analysis of the case against James Bradley and three other men. In following the hardships of him and his fellow escapees, this paper aims to showcase the process that allied combatants underwent when facing Japanese military justice, the uncertainty and opacity that accompanied a linguistically and culturally inaccessible system, in addition to the discrepancy between the experience of defendants and the system itself.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere from the viewpoint of Japanese emigrants to Southeast Asia in the 1940s. Focusing on those “pioneer emigrants” and Japan’s emigration policy, I will analyze the training process in Japan and their experiences in Southeast Asia.

Paper long abstract:

　　This paper aims to explore the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere from the viewpoint of Japanese emigrants to Southeast Asia in the 1940s. Focusing on those “pioneer emigrants” (takushi, 拓士) and Japan’s emigration policy to Southeast Asia, I will analyze the training process in Japan and their experiences in Southeast Asia by asking: What was the ideal image of the Japanese emigrants to Southeast Asia that the Japanese Empire sought to train? What kind of training did they actually receive and what kind of reality did they live in Southeast Asia?

　　The Ministry of Colonial Affairs (Takumusho,拓務省) implemented the Japanese Empire’s emigration policy to Southeast Asia in the 1940s. This policy is characterized by two features. The first is that young men around the age of 18 were trained as practical human resources for the development of Southeast Asia and as the role model of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere in order to embody the idea of coexistence and co-prosperity. By using not only the official documents such as Imperial Diet documents and Takumusho publications but also personal archives such as memoirs, letters and diaries I have uncovered, I will analyze the characteristics of Takunan preparatory school Takunan Juku (拓南塾), one of the institutions that trained southern emigrants and reconstruct those pioneer emigrants’ experience in the Philippines of graduates sent to Southeast Asia.