Korea's “nationalist historiography” (minjok sahak) school has taken another hit, this time from historian Brandon Palmer's nuanced examination of Korean military participation in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. The tendency to portray Japan's colonial regime as an omnipotent “totalitarian and fascist political machine that wrung out the lifeblood and economic vitality of the Korean people,” rendering them “powerless victims” who endured endless suffering (pp. 7–8), is mostly spent among scholars. At this writing, the government of the Republic of Korea is debating the merits of returning to a single, state-approved secondary school history textbook, which will no doubt reflect the anti-Japan sentiments of the Pak Kŭnhye administration, and thereby revive minjok sahak's fortunes. But according to Hankyoreh, a whopping 97 percent of South Korean history educators expressed opposition to the single-text proposal.Footnote 16 Despite the bitter legacies of history-related issues in contemporary ROK-Japan relations, there is clearly support for less blatantly indignant histories of the colonial period (1910–45), in South Korea and elsewhere.
Palmer aligns himself with scholars who insist that colonial rule was “morally objectionable,” but that even as colonial subjects Koreans retained autonomy and subjectivity within certain spheres of their lives. They participated in the creation of a modern society, made rational decisions about which battles to fight in resisting Japanese intrusions, and exploited the “nervousness” that the Government-General of Chōsen—like other colonial regimes—felt about potential uprisings. “Japan attempted to force conformity on the everyday behavior of Koreans,” Palmer writes, yet “lacked complete power over the Korean people” (pp. 10, 12, and 13).
Fighting for the Enemy and Takashi Fujitani's Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011) are the only major Anglophone studies on the subject of colonial Koreans in the Imperial Japanese Army. There are important differences between the books: Fujitani's is characteristically more theoretical and finds meaningful parallels between Korean military involvement and Japanese American participation in the U.S. Armed Forces; Palmer's utilizes Korean-language sources and offers an instructive comparative analysis of the mobilization of colonial armed forces in the British, French, and Dutch empires in both world wars. This comparative dimension is another jab at minjok sahak, a premise of which is the unparalleled cruelty of the colonial regime in Korea.
In crisply and concisely written prose—highly suitable for undergraduates—Palmer argues that the Japanese regime fretted about Koreans' ill-preparedness for military service and questioned their loyalty to the empire (p. 136). Ironically, however, colonial economic and educational policies had created this problem. The regime “cautiously implemented wartime policies to marshal Koreans in a way that minimized ethnic resistance and prevented a sense of entitlement among the Korean population” (p. 4). As a consequence, “wartime manpower laws for Koreans were watered-down versions of policies used to mobilize Japanese citizens” (p. 6). Koreans had “a choice to participate” and thus “were active agents (not passive victims) throughout the mobilization processes,” if for no other reason than to “avoid coercion” (pp. 74–83).
Palmer devotes a chapter each to volunteer systems, conscription (not implemented for Koreans until 1944), and labor mobilization. He contends, contrary to conventional wisdom, that volunteer recruitment had been a topic of discussion for most of the 1930s, and was not enacted in 1938 simply out of military necessity for Japan's fight against China (pp. 44–46). Both Koreans and Japanese had their own reasons for advocating for or against Korean military service. It would not only facilitate assimilation of colony and metropole, but strengthen Koreans' case for enfranchisement and representation in the Imperial Diet. Some Japanese worried that Koreans were insufficiently patriotic and too “effeminate,” but both sides acknowledged that military service might remedy that. The regime had to dial back assertions of Koreans' “shortcomings” to encourage voluntarism (pp. 53–55). Japanese and Koreans understood that military service would give the latter more investment in the colonial relationship, yet both were ambivalent about where that might lead.
Despite manpower shortages, conscription was delayed until December 1944 so the regime could “revise laws, intensify indoctrination efforts, … and prepare men for military service….” Korea's “wartime potential” was thus “shackled” (pp. 137–38); Koreans' “most significant contribution” was their labor (p. 139), which also involved Korean agency. Ultimately, Korean military service did not “provide Japan any military or political advantage,” but was most useful as a propaganda instrument (p. 90).
Palmer makes a problematic claim that Koreans had a “cultural aversion to martial activities” (p. 27)—a statement he later contradicts—and that “Korean and Japanese culture had disparate views on the social value of soldiers” (p. 55). Certainly, in Korea and China, civil service was more prestigious, but that is not the same thing as a “cultural aversion” (and I generally object to anthropomorphic uses of “culture”). Nevertheless, Fighting for the Enemy is immensely valuable as a sensitive and insightful ideological and institutional study of a painful topic that still plagues Japan-Korea relations.
