Survivor: The latest Korean war criminal in Japan seeks recognition

TOKYO (Reuters) – For casual observer, 95-year-old Lee Hak-ra could have been just an elderly person in Japan. Surrounded by photographs of his family and paintings of his grandchildren, Lee tells of his cramped living room on the outskirts of Tokyo.

But Lee is obsessed with the brutal events of 75 years ago that have defined his life: his recruitment into the Japanese army from then-occupied Korea in 1942; his role in the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway; being assigned a World War II criminal; and how, he says, he was thrown into the dust of history by Japan and South Korea.

Since regaining its sovereignty under the San Francisco Peace Treaty signed in 1951 and reviving military pensions in 1953, Japan has provided a pension supplement that could add about $ 41,000 a year to military veterans.

That includes war criminals and their families, government officials say. Japanese wartime leaders convicted of war crimes by an Allied court have been honored at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.

The treaty also meant that the Koreans who fought for Japan lost their Japanese nationality, and with it, the right to such assistance. Most importantly for Lee, men have never been offered the attention and a sense of closeness given to their Japanese counterparts.

“Listen to me. Why are they treating us differently?” Says Lee, exchanging a barely audible voice between Koreans and Japanese.

“It’s unjust and it doesn’t make sense. How can I accept this incredible situation?” Lee said as he tightened his dog’s ear cuts documenting his years of campaign for recognition and compensation.

Lee was among 148 Korean war criminals convicted after the war. Now he is the last survivor.

Twenty-three of them were executed and he was also sentenced to death by hanging as Kakurai Hiromura in 1947.

His sentence was commuted to 20 years on appeal. He was released on bail from a Tokyo jail in 1956.

About 240,000 Korean men took part in the war from the Japanese side.

After the war, while allied governments assembling suspected war criminals as Japanese people, they were rejected by Korea and Japan, historians say.

“Koreans convicted of war crimes had a terrible time after the war because they were regarded as collaborators by other Koreans, but they were not recognized by the Japanese government as veterans,” said Robert Cribb, professor of history at the Australian National University.

Cribb said it was unfair that Japan gave pensions to their war criminals, but not to Koreans who were part of the Japanese military.

LIKARDI

In 1943, Lee oversaw the building of about 500 Allied prisoners of war (POW) which later became known as the Railway of Death between Thailand and Myanmar.

About 12,000 POW died from overwork, beatings and exhaustion during the construction of the 415 km (258 mile) line. The conditions became famous in the 1957 film “Bridge over the Kwai River”.

Minutes reviewed by Reuters show that the prisoners remembered Lee, known as Lizard, as one of the most brutal guards on the railroad.

Austen Fyfe, an Australian POW, said Lee was notorious for his brutality and beat him repeatedly, including with a bamboo stick in the back of his head. The other inmates said Lee would be stuck in their pre-arranged hospital and “beat people he thought were good enough to work”.

Lee told the court he had “pushed them a little closer to the shoulder” but denied the allegations of brutality, the records show. Lee said the Koreans were in the lowest neighborhood of the Japanese military hierarchy and simply took orders.

After his release, Lee started a taxi company with other Korean war criminals. Afraid of being labeled a traitor at home, he felt he could not return, even missing his mother’s funeral.

“Except for my parents and sisters, no one would expect me,” he said.

In 1999, the Supreme Court of Japan rejected claims of compensation by Lee and other Korean war criminals.

In 2006, South Korea recognized them as victims of Japanese imperialism but offered no compensation to those living in Japan. They in Korea gained the right to subsidized health care.

Lee can now only walk with help but he continues to campaign, even from his wheelchair. In June, he went to parliament to urge lawmakers to propose a law to compensate Korean war criminals and their families.

“I was lucky to live to 95. I do not want to live any longer for myself, but I can not stop fighting for my dead friends,” he said.