During WWII, is it true that Kamikaze pilots also consisted of drafted Korean soldiers?

by [deleted]

First off, I am a Korean and so my source for this question is just word of mouth.

From what I gathered, a lot of Korean boys were drafted into the Imperial Japanese army either by force or willingly. Of many such instances, the claim is that some of those kids were forced onto Kamikaze planes that attacked places like Pearl Harbour. That, Kamikaze is nothing like the glorified war heroics that Japanese media make it out to be.

The saying goes these people are enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine against the families' wishes to bury them back home.

How accurate is this claim, and how much of it made up to muddy the fact that a lot of Korean people did willingly join the Imperial armed forces?

ParkSungJun

I can't comment on whether or not they were "forced" into the kamikaze planes, but here's what I can tell you:

First, kamikaze attacks did not really start until 1944. While there were isolated incidents of pilots making suicide attacks, that was usually as they were already losing control of their craft, or in times of sheer desperation (like a Japanese pilot threw his plane into a torpedo to protect his home carrier). Thus, it should be fairly clear that there were no kamikaze attacks on Pearl Harbor.

Secondly, there are several Koreans and Taiwanese who are enshrined in Yasukuni shrine. But the enshrining process is a bit murky, because of religious differences between Koreans and the Japanese. Enshrinement is not like burying a body, but rather more like capturing a person's spirit to be venerated at the shrine along with all the other spirits enshrined there. Many of the soldiers enshrined there have their remains buried elsewhere, or in some cases they never made it home. Think of it being like the Japanese version of the US's Arlington National Cemetery, but with less bodies.

Among these enshrined troops are the Class A war criminals that were executed as a result of war crimes. Some of those executed include senior officers of Korean descent who almost certainly joined the Imperial Japanese Army/Navy willingly. On the other hand, there was also severe pressure on Korean and Taiwanese people to join the military (whether it be outright coercion or the fact that families that had members serving got better rations), and it is difficult yo truly ascertain who was in it for the cause and who was in it because they had no choice.

With regards to your point about kamikaze pilots, a big part of the issue is that there was a huge amount of social pressure to be a kamikaze. While kamikaze pilots were typically trained by a pilot "volunteering" to enroll in the kamikaze training course, they were often recruited by recruiters who appealed to them to do so by making them think it was their country's survival at stake, using this sort of manipulation, as well as the ensuing peer pressure, to attract many "volunteers" to do so.

With regards to your last point, I will try not to comment too much on this as the issue is still a political hot potato, but after Korea achieved independence there was a significant amount of backlash against Japan and Koreans friendly to Japanese rule, most notably the chinilpa. There were a series of trials to punish these chinilpa after the war, although due to domestic political wrangling and the outbreak of the Korean war these trials were forgotten until more recently.

kieslowskifan

It's important to note that even though the Army and Navy air services (there was no unified Japanese air force) began to increasingly rely upon conscripts, such conscripts often came from the ranks of elite institutions like universities and drew upon the middling and upper classes. Flying planes, even for a one-way mission, is a highly technical affair. In the case of Korean pilots in both the Japanese Army and Navy drew upon the colonial Korean elite, so their attitudes towards the empire and background were not typical of other Koreans drafted. Some of these individuals did volunteer for "Special Attack" training but as ParkSungJim notes there was great social pressure to volunteer.

Overall, there were not that many Korean Kamikaze pilots (is the most frequently cited number) and their motivations were complex. Kim San Pil, one of the volunteers, told his brother "I must become more Japanese than the Japanese in order that we Koreans may gain their respect." He would later write a farewell letter extolling the Japanese emperor, but explicitly stated he was Korean and wrote his letter in Korean. These sentiments were mirrored by Tak Kyung-Hun who told his mother:

You know I am from Korea. I want to go on a Special Attack mission at the earliest possible moment for our Empire. Mama, please live a long and rewarding life on my behalf! Now, allow me to sing for you a Korean song.

Sentiments such as these reflect the difficulty of trying to place these pilots into Korean nationalist narratives of Japanese colonial exploitation and victimization. The evidence left behind by these pilots defies easy categorization as either victim or collaborators. Some in Tak's hometown have been trying to erect a statue memorializing him, but popular sentiment has blocked its unveiling.

Sources

Axell, Albert, and Hideaki Kase. Kamikaze: Japan's Suicide Gods. Harlow, [U.K.]: Longman, 2002.

Kim Hyung Jin "Opponents try to block memorial for Korean kamikaze" The Japan Times. Accessed :http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/05/10/national/opponents-try-to-block-memorial-for-korean-kamikaze/#.U-OnaWOnbyo

Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. Kamikaze Diaries. University of Chicago Press, 2010.