Korean war criminal’s bid to get military pension touches raw nerve in Japan
- Lee Hak-rae was one of 240,000 Korean men who fought for Japan during World War II before being stripped of citizenship and convicted of war crimes
- Now Lee wants an apology and compensation from the Japanese government but his campaign has earned him little sympathy online
Lee, who lives in Tokyo, claims he is entitled to the same pension as other Japanese veterans, which can be about US$41,000 a year.
“Listen to me,” he said during a recent interview. “Why are they treating us differently? It’s unfair and doesn’t make any sense. How can I accept this unbelievable situation?”
Under the terms of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, Koreans who fought for Japan lost their Japanese nationality – as well as their right to a pension. South Korea also refused to provide them with financial support.
In 1955, a group of veterans living in Japan set up a group named Doshinkai to demand the government apologise for forcing them to join the Japanese military and to seek compensation for damage to their reputations. Lee is the last surviving member of the group but insists he will continue his campaign to the bitter end.
He has struggled to attract support, though, with many objections citing his conviction for war crimes. After Tokyo’s surrender, 321 of its colonial subjects were convicted by Allied military courts of class B and C offences, including mistreatment of prisoners. In total, 26 Taiwanese and 23 Koreans were subsequently executed.
Lee was among those sentenced to hang for his brutal treatment of Allied POWs building the notorious “Death Railway” in Thailand and Myanmar – then known as Burma. About 12,000 POWs and 90,000 Asian labourers died from overwork, beatings and exhaustion during the construction, which was dramatised in the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai.