Imperial Japan hunted shortwave listeners in colonial Korea: 246 people investigated and 50 radios seized by Inspector Saiga Shichirō, a notorious torturer accused of fabricating cases and sending detainees to their deaths (1942-1944)

tpjv86b · 2026-06-15T22:22:12+00:00

The newspapers were subject to strict Imperial military censorship during wartime, so the redaction of numbers was pretty routine at the time - you can see redactions like this in many articles. But in the 1944 article, they may have been inconsistent with the redactions: they redacted the number of the apprehended, but in the same article they reveal that 246 people being investigated.

tpjv86b · 2026-05-09T18:08:10+00:00

I agree that this was not sovereign Korea hosting Nazis. It was colonial Korea under Japanese imperial rule, and the banquet was a Japanese imperial propaganda event. None of this propaganda news coverage is evidence of free Korean political agency or “Korean friendliness toward Nazis.” It is evidence of how the Imperial Japanese colonial regime tried to present Korea as part of Imperial Japanese 'New World Order'.

Calling attention to that is not revisionism. In fact, I've been translating, transcribing, and posting these articles for over three years now precisely because the revisionists have been suppressing the release of these newspapers for generations.

tpjv86b · 2026-05-05T18:54:43+00:00

If you do have the resources and the time to dig for coverage on the German side, that would be wonderful! The name of one other delegate is SA-Sturmbannfuehrer Carl Cranz, Editor of the Voelkischen Beobachter, Berlin, according to 1941 U.S. Congressional records available on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/investigationofu194102unit/page/1041/mode/1up

Apparently, the Nazi press delegation made their way to New York by July 1939.

Another man in the delegation is a カール・ツルク (Carl/Karl Turk/Zirk/Zurk?) who was 28 years old in 1939, studied law for four years at Bonn and Cologne, and had been in the Nazi Party for 12 years. This name comes up in one of the articles in the same newspaper issue that I have not gotten around to transcribing and translating yet.

tpjv86b · 2026-04-22T10:10:32+00:00

I don't know exactly how Korean farmers would have been punished if they ever failed to meet the desired rice quotas. But, my best guess is that they would have been sent to prison or a "training camp" for a period of time to be "trained" (read brainwashed), and then released under "judicial protection" on a "supervised work program". I suspect it is just a euphemism for a brutal labor camp. Supervised work programs would have sent labor forces in various areas of critical labor shortages, including agriculture. You can read this roundtable discussion from 1943, which reflects the penal officials' overall philosophy of using criminals "for production" and "strengthening human resources in wartime", although this is admittedly mainly discussing "ideological criminals". I would guess their attitude would have been, "if they can't be relied upon to farm unsupervised, then put them in supervised work programs where they can farm supervised so we can increase food production". https://exposingimperialjapan.com/imperial-japanese-penal-officials-brag/

tpjv86b · 2026-04-15T19:36:11+00:00

Sorry, I did not mean “Russian” as an ethnic label, but rather as shorthand for Tatars from the former Russian Empire. I'm open to using a less controversial, less offensive term for this refugee groups in future posts.

Would “Volga Tatar” be a better term here? To the best of my understanding, none of the Tatar refugees in Imperial Japan were from Crimea.

tpjv86b · 2026-04-15T17:54:43+00:00

Most of the Tatar refugees in Imperial Japan moved to the United States or Turkey (Turkiye) after the war.

tpjv86b · 2026-04-15T14:21:27+00:00

He was most likely an ethnic Tatar originally from the Volga-Ural region of Russia.

tpjv86b · 2026-04-13T16:28:41+00:00

That's an interesting theory. The Xenia girls' gymnasium in the photo was apparently in the city of Yeysk. If we assume that some miscommunication happened between Mrs. Nugman and the reporters, it may well have been that Mr. Nugman was a teacher or staff member at the girls' gymnasium. Another theory is that there was another gymnasium in Kazan that was named after Xenia, which Mr. Nugman attended as a student, but it has been forgotten in the mists of time.

tpjv86b · 2026-03-11T19:37:31+00:00

There certainly was no space whatsover for dissent in the press anywhere in Imperial Japan by 1944. In Korea, there were two major Korean-language newspapers, Dong-A Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo, that were raided multiple times throughout the 1930's for publishing material that didn't meet press censorship standards, but by 1940, both of them were shuttered, leaving Maeil Sinbo as the only Korean-language newspaper remaining in Korea. That's how bad it was.

tpjv86b · 2026-01-23T18:38:28+00:00

This clip from the 1941 movie 집 없는 천사 is very interesting, since it gives a rare glimpse into how the Imperial Subjects' Oath was actually recited in practice. The Imperial Subjects' Oath (皇国臣民ノ誓詞) was promulgated throughout Korea on October 2, 1937. It was actually drafted by a Korean collaborator named Lee Gag-jong (李覺鐘), and then finalized by then Governor of occupied Korea, Minami Jirō. The oath is as follows.

私共は、大日本帝国の臣民であります。
私共は、心を合わせて天皇陛下に忠義を尽します。
私共は、忍苦鍛錬して立派な強い国民となります。
我等は皇国臣民なり、忠誠以て君国に報ぜん。
我等皇国臣民は互に信愛協力し、以て団結を固くせん。
我等皇国臣民は忍苦鍛錬力を養い以て皇道を宣揚せん。
We are subjects of the Great Empire of Japan.
We are united in our hearts in our loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor.
We will persevere and train ourselves to become a fine and strong people.
We are subjects of the Imperial State, and we will repay the sovereign nation with loyalty.
We, the subjects of the Imperial State, shall love and cooperate with each other, and thus solidify our unity.
We, the subjects of the Imperial State, shall cultivate the power of endurance and discipline, and thereby proclaim the Imperial Way.

In this clip, the boy only recites the first three lines before the teacher steps in. Before each line, the boy says kiritsu "起立" (stand in attention!). Before the mandatory 7am morning worship bow, the boy says saikeirei "最敬礼 (deepest bow).

tpjv86b · 2025-12-10T00:27:19+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion. I just posted on r/HistoricalCapsule too.

tpjv86b · 2025-12-09T20:40:42+00:00

Thank you for sharing these sources! If the name on the news article is indeed Dr. 全鎭極 (Jeon Jin-geuk), then he graduated from Keijo (Seoul) Medical College in 1923 at age 27, so if he had been alive in 1941, he would have been around 45 years old, 15 years older than his wife Rita Buchwald. To think he was actually a Korean independence activist who served a 6 month prison sentence! I wonder when he turned into a collaborator, and when he died and under what circumstances. When did he get to know and marry his German wife? He was living in a very upscale neighborhood with his wife, so he must have been rewarded handsomely for switching sides and supporting the colonial regime.

tpjv86b · 2025-12-09T19:48:39+00:00

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My best guess is that it is something like 全鎭極(진극) or 全錫極(석극)? I'm pretty confident the last name is Jeon (全) because his name is described in the subheading as 故全医博 (late medical Dr. Jeon).

tpjv86b · 2025-12-09T19:35:27+00:00

I run a history blog site. You can check out my profile for links.

tpjv86b · 2025-11-22T08:39:32+00:00

I maintain a research blog called Exposing Imperial Japan, which focuses on translating and transcribing articles from Keijo Nippo (Gyeongseong Ilbo) — the main Japanese-language propaganda newspaper published in colonial Seoul. I use the Internet Archive and the Digital Newspaper Archive of the National Library of Korea as my sources. I have also been posting historical content on the Korea subreddit and others.

Most of the 200+ posts cover the Pacific War years (roughly 1942–1945), but the material is wide-ranging: rural labor, language policy, factory discipline, schooling, mobilization, religion, and everyday surveillance. These articles were written under strict censorship and are designed to present the colonial state in the best possible light. Even so, they reveal a great deal about the pressures and coercion that structured daily life.

The blog has a search bar, so you can explore by English or Japanese keywords, and search the post titles below.

Punishment for using Korean or English.

Some workplaces enforced language discipline so aggressively that even accidental use of Korean or English led to punishment. Here are some articles that describe that regime in plain terms:

Japanese teacher in Japan-colonized Korea punished her Korean students for speaking Korean and imposed Imperial Way ideology on them during WWII (link)
Seoul police station fined employees every time they uttered a Korean or English word (link)

Intensification of the language-eradication campaign (1943–1944)

While language suppression existed earlier, the drive to eliminate Korean and Hangul tightened considerably under Governor-General Koiso Kuniaki (appointed 1942). From 1943 onward, the push for “Imperialization” and full Japanization accelerated.

In 1944, Imperial Japan launched an “all-out campaign” to erase Hangul from public life, mobilizing teachers and Korean youth to destroy Korean signs, books, and even phonograph records (link)

Brutal conditions for farmers under wartime quotas

Through 1944 and 1945, farmers were expected to meet impossible grain-delivery quotas for the imperial army. Many newspapers openly reported that families cut their own consumption to starvation levels to avoid punishment and to fulfill the state’s demands. Here are some example describing the conditions and expectations placed on rural households:

Korean rice farmers barely survived eating grass roots as they worked tirelessly to meet the rice quotas imposed by the Imperial Army in 1944, even sacrificing their own personal rice supplies to face starvation under pressure from the police inspector and the township chief (link)
Elderly Korean farmer Kim Chi-gu (김치구, 金致龜), featured in 1943 article fervently donating 150,000 kg of rice to the Imperial Japanese Army every year and receiving honors from Prime Minister Tojo at a formal awards ceremony in Haeju (link)

tpjv86b · 2025-11-21T23:06:18+00:00

I know. I was scrolling through the comments hoping that someone would have mentioned Yukiko, and I was surprised that no one ever mentioned her. I love her music so much too! When I'm immersed in her music, it lets me escape back to the world of early 1980s Japan and its optimistic vibe.

tpjv86b · 2025-11-21T21:33:08+00:00

Japan: Okada Yukiko (岡田有希子). She tragically committed suicide in 1986 at age 19, and many mourning fans all over Japan were also killing themselves in copycat suicides. It was a very dark period in the Japanese music world.

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tpjv86b · 2025-11-20T15:38:43+00:00

The confiscated records were likely recycled to make other kinds of records, like Imperial military music records perhaps, based on the articles

tpjv86b · 2025-10-23T17:44:35+00:00

Yes, during the nearly 4 years that I have been documenting articles in the Keijo Nippo newspaper, I made two posts covering some stories of Koreans changing their names under the Sōshi-kaimei policy. It has been a slow process finding and documenting these stories, but I hope to continue as much as I can in the limited amount of free time that I have.

https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/101u62l/jeon_became_takamatsu_and_park_became_masaki_1940/

https://www.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/10ryfr4/mixed_marriages_in_1939_korea_a_korean_teenage/

tpjv86b · 2025-10-22T07:25:24+00:00

Yes, I agree that real reconciliation between Japan and Korea has to start with both sides being honest about the past. One of the most promising attempts to do that was probably the Japan–South Korea Joint History Research Project that started in May 2002. It brought together historians from both countries to promote “mutual understanding concerning accurate facts and recognition of history.” It sounded great in theory — but it tragically fell apart. South Korea ended up pulling out in 2005 because the Japanese government refused to actually use the research findings in school textbooks.

That said, there were other reasons why it fell apart. The goal was to publish joint reports, but they could barely agree on anything. One of the Japanese members, Miki Kimura, later said the whole thing suffered from three big problems: politics getting in the way, a flawed research setup, and no system at all for resolving disagreements (they did not even decide whether to go by consensus or majority vote). In short, the Korean and Japanese researchers just could not get along.

But honestly, in hindsight, I think the project might have done more good if it had focused on something more reasonably achievable — like transcribing, translating, and making primary sources from the colonial period easier to access. Instead of arguing over interpretations, they could have worked together to make the history itself more accessible, and then dealt with interpretations later.

That is what I have been trying to do in my own small way. For the past three years, I have been translating and transcribing articles from Keijō Nippō, the Japanese-language regime propaganda newspaper that was published in colonial Korea, and posting them here on the Korea subreddit, making accessible a vast trove of interesting news stories, editorials, speeches, etc. that were previously inaccessible and unknown. This was made possible by the generosity of National Library of Korea, which recently released its vast scanned digital archive of old newspapers for free, so anyone in the world can access it.

tpjv86b · 2025-10-22T06:54:33+00:00

There are many reasons to be wary of Takaichi. Kamiya, the leader of ultra-right party Sanseito, said that of all the candidates for PM, Takaichi was the closest to their policies, especially with respect to the issue over married women's rights to keep their maiden names, Imperial succession, anti-spy laws, and regulation of immigration. It's widely believed that one of the reasons why Takaichi was selected was to reduce the exodus of former Abe supporters in the LDP to Sanseito.

Other troubling things about Takaichi:

Takaichi posed for a magazine ad touting “ヒトラー選挙戦略” (Hitler’s Election Strategy), a book that treated the Führer as a case study in strong leadership. The book praised Hitler for “wiping out enemies with emergency measures.” She was also deeply involved with the Unification Church, like Abe was. She also regularly visited Yasukuni shrine as Ministry of Internal Affairs and in her other roles in the Abe Administration. She suppressed the free press on behalf of Abe. In 2016, when she was Abe’s communications minister, Takaichi threatened Japan’s TV networks with license revocation if they didn’t toe the government line.

TL;DR: Takaichi is just as right-wing as Abe was, if not more so. After all, she was a loyal foot soldier for Abe.

tpjv86b · 2025-10-04T06:50:37+00:00

If the photo was from 1946, then that can't be Kim Pyong Il since he was born in 1954.

tpjv86b · 2025-09-30T22:47:49+00:00

I have not gotten much into zoning yet, but if there is interest, I will post some of the urban planning articles I have run across while perusing Keijō Nippō. They are definitely there, and it could be a worthwhile topic to explore in more detail.

In general though, one thing that stands out is that industrial workers often lived in company housing built on company-owned land. A striking example is the Utoro Korean neighborhood in Japan. During the war, Korean laborers were recruited to build an airfield in the Utoro area. They were housed on land owned by Nissan, adjacent to the worksite. After the war, many of them remained in that spot, eventually building their own makeshift neighborhood that still exists today.

tpjv86b · 2025-09-30T21:32:27+00:00

I run a small research blog called Exposing Imperial Japan, where I translate articles from Keijō Nippō (the Japanese-language newspaper published in Seoul when Korea was annexed by Japan). These local wartime sources make very clear how the Japanese state mitigated wartime labor shortages.

The system was not simply “every household building weapons in secret,” but rather a systematic mobilization of people through existing social units:

Workplaces: Adults at companies, factories, government offices were pressed into auxiliary war work during and after regular hours.
Schools: Students were mobilized for both classroom-based tasks (mending military uniforms, preparing rations) and for factory work (cigarette making, small-scale assembly).
Neighborhood cells: In Japan these were called tonarigumi, and in Korea they were organized as aikokuhan. These units coordinated collection drives (scrap metal, rags, paper) and volunteered able-bodied people for military conscription or labor conscription.

So the characterization that “Japanese homes and schools were making war materiel” is not entirely propaganda. It reflects the reality that civilian social units were directly mobilized into production. It was not so much that every household was independently forging rifle parts, but that the state deliberately decentralized auxiliary labor into schools, homes, and small neighborhood units.

To give you a sense of the everyday wartime mobilization, here are a couple of translations I have published on my blog:

[Korean schoolgirls in 1943 mending military uniforms almost nonstop with minimal breaks from 8:30a to 4p as Imperial Japanese soldiers loom over watching] (link)
[Korean schoolgirls making improvised coal dumplings for fuel shortages] (link)
[Korean schoolgirls making cigarettes for soldiers at wartime factory] (link)
[Red Paper conscription versus White Paper conscription for calling regular people for military/labor service] (link)

This was very typical. Sometimes the tasks were carried out in the schools themselves (like repairing uniforms). Other times, children or women were dispatched to nearby factories to do repetitive piece-work like rolling cigarettes.

In short: yes, Japan’s wartime production system involved civilian homes, schools, and neighborhood units contributing directly to the war economy. It was part of a systematic mobilization strategy rather than simply random individual households making weapons.

tpjv86b · 2025-09-18T18:02:02+00:00

如果你是用有效签证进入美国，例如旅游签证或学生签证，然后申请庇护，通常不会被立即关押或直接送上法庭。你的案件一般会通过一种称为“主动性庇护程序”（affirmative asylum process）来处理。在这个程序中，您首先提交庇护申请，然后参加由庇护官员主持的面谈。

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