Last Korean war criminal to serve in Japan’s World War II army dies, without securing apology or compensation from Tokyo

Lee Hak-rae, who was born in South Korea under Japanese colonisation, was convicted of war crimes for his abuse of Allied POWs in Thailand

He was the last member of a group of war criminals calling for an apology for being forced to serve in the Japanese military, as well as compensation and pensions

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Lee Hak-rae, who has died aged 96, was the last surviving Korean war criminal from World War II. He joined the Japanese army at the age of 17 and was sent to guard POWs in Thailand. Photo: Reuters

Published: 4:00pm, 30 Mar 2021Updated: 4:04pm, 30 Mar 2021

The last Korean to be convicted of war crimes after serving in the Japanese military during World War II has died without receiving the apology and compensation he insisted Tokyo owed him for his suffering. Lee Hak-rae, 96, died on Sunday.

Lee was born in 1925 in what is now Jeollanam-do in South Korea, but was raised as Japanese as the Korean peninsula had been colonised by Japan since 1910. He took the name Hiromura Kakurai and joined the military at 17, eventually being sent to Thailand to guard Allied prisoners of war being forced to construct the Burma-Thailand railway for the planned invasion of British-held India.

He was posted to the POW camp at Hintok, which provided labour for the notorious stretch of the line known as Hellfire Pass. Around 100 of the approximately 700 Australians working at the site died, mostly of overwork and illnesses such as dysentery and cholera, although the physical abuse they experienced was also a contributing factor.

Interviewed in 1988, Lee said he had never abused prisoners in his charge and that he had been frightened of them because of their stature.

That claim was undermined by the diaries of Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop, the Australian army colonel who served in the Medical Corps and was captured at Java in 1942. In one passage, Dunlop wrote that he had become so incensed at the brutal treatment by “The Lizard” – the nickname the POWs gave to Lee – that he found a length of wood and hid alongside a jungle path he knew Lee would be taking. His intention was to kill Lee and conceal the body in the undergrowth, but he changed his mind after realising that he and other POWs would be held accountable for Lee’s death.

In 1988, Lee was shocked at this revelation and said he had no idea of how close he came to death that day.

Three years later, he travelled to Australia for a reunion of Burma railway survivors and, for the first time in almost 50 years, met Dunlop. Lee apologised and later presented him with a gold watch inscribed with the words “No more Hintok”.

After Japan’s surrender in 1945, 321 of its colonial subjects were convicted by Allied military courts of war crimes, many of which involved the mistreatment of prisoners. Twenty-three Koreans and 26 Taiwanese were ultimately executed.