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Former POW camp guard Lee Hak-rae

Japanese university students produced a documentary on the life of a Korean who was enlisted as a POW camp guard during World War II, only to end up branded a war criminal, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported on Jan. 15. Titled “The Hidden Irrationality of Postwar Compensation: The Battle of a Korean Class B/C War Criminal,” the documentary was screened in Tokyo’s Iidabashi district on Jan. 14 by eight third-year students under the direction of Yasushi Suzuki, a professor of intercultural communication at Hosei University, the newspaper said.

After deciding to focus on the Korean Class B/C war crime issue as a school seminar topic, the students made a documentary on the life of 92-year-old Lee Hak-rae, who formed the group Dongjinhoe to address the issue. Lee has been working to demand an apology and compensation from the Japanese government.

After the end of World War II, the Allied Powers classified German and Japanese war criminals into the three classes of A, B, and C. Class A war criminals were those responsible for planning and initiating or carrying out wars of aggression, while Class B and C war criminals were those who had committed abuses of POWs and pillaging, as well as acts of torture and murder on orders from superiors.

At issue is that fact that many Koreans were enlisted by the Japanese to serve as POW camp guards during the Pacific War, only to end up facing harsh sentences of death or life imprisonment at the Allies’ postwar international trials. In many cases, Korean guards mobilized as civilian employees of the Japanese military ended up charged with POW abuse because they were in a position to relay the military’s orders. While Japan did establish laws after the war to support soldiers and civilian military employees, the Korean guards were ineligible for benefits, as they had lost their Japanese citizenship.

As a 17-year-old, Lee was sent to serve as a POW guard at a railroad construction site in Thailand. After the war, he received a death sentence. While it was subsequently commuted to 20 years, 11 of which he served, many of his colleagues ended up put to death. Lee was also unable to return to Korea, as he was criticized for role in working with the Japanese military. When the students visited to film the documentary, Lee told them he wanted to “resolve the bitterness of my lost colleagues and restore their reputations.”

The students, who said they were unaware until recently of the term “Class B/C war criminal,” said Lee’s words about acting on behalf of his colleagues “stuck with us,” the newspaper said.

“To be honest, I had wondered before how long Japan had to keep apologizing, but then I realized we cannot turn our eyes away,” one of the students said.

At the documentary’s end, a narrator says, “Just three of the colleagues who have worked with [Lee] remain. As young people, how should we approach an issue that demands swift resolution?”

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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