hankyoreh

An autobiographical book by a Japanese-American writer claiming rape and slaughter by Koreans was contradicted by another Japanese woman who said she and others were able to travel safely through a similar route at about the same time.

Yoko Kawashima Watkins, in her book "So Far from the Bamboo Grove," says she witnessed anti-Japanese Korean "communists" rape Japanese women and kill others as she and her family fled southward from Nanam, a city now in North Korea, toward the end of World War II.

Japan colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945.

Identifying herself as a daughter of Yoshio Kawashima, then a Japanese government official, the author said the Japanese were terrorized by the Koreans seeking them out.

The book is read as part of English language curriculum in many middle schools in New York and Boston as well as in Los Angeles.

It is also being used at international schools in South Korea.

Korean-American students and parents have joined forces to remove it from school, gathering evidence and informing school authorities that the author fabricated much of her account.

Watkins' story was contradicted by Harumi Ishii, who in 1982 wrote a two-part series in the Japan Times about her travel from Harbin, China, to Japan.

Harumi Ishii is the daughter of Shiro Ishii, the mastermind behind the notorious Unit 731, a biological warfare headquarters that tested germs and weapons on Koreans and Chinese.

She began to evacuate south on Aug. 11, 1945 with Unit 731 members, traveling by train to Korea along the east coast and then by boat to Japan. Watkins says in her book that her escape began on July 29 of that year.

Ishii wrote in the Japan Times that thousands of Japanese women and children were on the train, but they had no problems with harassment. Some people gave them water at a Korean train station, but the Japanese were reluctant to drink it for fear that it might have been poisoned, she said.

Both Watkins and Ishii talk about a mother giving birth on the train, raising a possibility that they may even have been on the same train.

Some argue this, in turn, suggests Watkins' father may also have worked at Unit 731.

A publisher's note said the author's father returned to Japan after six years in a Siberian prison camp.

The author said he attended Oxford University, but the parents who tried to confirm it found no record of his name there.

Kim Chang-gwon, head of a truth-finding committee on Unit 731, said all the Japanese war criminals who served in the Siberian camp and later returned to Japan were those who worked for the unit.

"Twelve people from Unit 731 who were tried at the war tribunal in Khabarovsk in December 1949 were sentenced between two and 25 years and sent to Siberia. They were all released in 1956 and went back to Japan," he said.
Washington, Jan. 17 (Yonhap News)