Historian Kim Jung-Mi, who heads the Society for Uncovering the Truth about the Kishu Mine, informed me that The Korean Patriotic Corps (2007), produced by the Society for Uncovering the Truth about the Kishu Mine, and The Yuetang Village Massacre on Hainan Island (2008), produced by the Hainan Island Society for Modern and Contemporary History, have been made available on YouTube. The two films document, from different perspectives, events that took place on Hainan Island during its occupation by Japanese imperial forces. Hainan Island is China’s southernmost island, located in the South China Sea, with the Gulf of Tonkin lying to its west. The Imperial Japanese Navy occupied the island from February 1939 until Japan’s defeat in 1945.
The Yuetang Village Massacre on Hainan Island depicts the massacre of residents that took place under that occupation. Japanese naval units attacked villages in various locations, indiscriminately killing non-combatants. Women were repeatedly subjected to sexual violence, and residents, including infants, children, and the elderly, were burned to death or shot. Furthermore, livestock, food, and resources were thoroughly plundered.
Meanwhile, The Korean Patriotic Corps deals with the history of people sent from colonial Korea to Hainan Island. From 1943 onward, the Japanese Navy requested the Government-General of Korea to send over 2,000 prisoners imprisoned in various Korean prisons to Hainan Island as the Korean Patriotic Corps. The purpose was to compensate for the labor shortage caused by industrial development. Despite the forced mobilization of Hainan islanders and the recruitment and transfer of some 15,000 laborers from Hong Kong, there was still a labor shortage. Many people lost their lives amidst harsh labor and violence, but the excavation and identification of remains were not adequately carried out, and recovery from the suffering remains difficult to this day.
Both films are supported by the testimonies of survivors. Their bodies bear the scars of gunshot wounds and cuts inflicted by military swords. The traces of Japanese military violence confront us not merely as historical facts, but as an experience that continues to this day. Particularly shocking is the account that the violence was often carried out as though it were being enjoyed. The witnesses, having survived life-threatening injuries, repeatedly recount their memories, declaring, “We will never forgive.” The repetition of their narratives makes us understand that the memory of the suffering lives on, undiminished by oblivion.
The scars left on their bodies are not merely evidence of the past. When shown in the film, the scars become symbols pointing to the origins of anger and suffering. Considering the passage of time, by now, many of those who testified have likely passed away. However, the scars remain as traces of violence, carrying that memory into the present.
The film simultaneously brings to light another issue. Many of the Japanese soldiers involved in the atrocities on Hainan Island reintegrated into Japanese society after the war. Living with the benefits of rapid economic growth, the events of Hainan Island gradually faded from societal memory. The same applies to the post-war Buraku Liberation Movement, which has ignored and turned a blind eye to the war responsibility of the Zenkoku Suiheisha, which converted to totalitarianism. Present-day Burakumin should at least consider the possibility that their grandfathers or fathers were involved in the massacres on Hainan Island.
Incidentally, why were such atrocities possible?
I see in this the workings of biopolitics, which, while protecting life, pushes certain lives outside of that protection. According to Giorgio Agamben, sovereign power creates a state of exception, within which people excluded from legal protection are produced. Agamben called such figures Homo Sacer. Under colonial rule, the inhabitants of Hainan Island and Koreans were treated not as full political subjects, but as objects of management, mobilization, and disposal. They were incorporated into the governing order, yet excluded from its protection. At that point, human beings are reduced to lives whose killing no longer registers as a political or moral problem.
This is the extreme form of biopolitics.
However, biopolitics does not only appear in totalitarian states. Biopolitics also appears when we wish to “live” and “protect life,” because the protection of life becomes the central issue of politics. However, in totalitarian states, life is both an object of protection and an object of control. The state decides which lives to protect and which to sacrifice. And the criteria for that decision are directed towards biological life itself. Agamben pointed out that, since the modern era, as a result of placing biological life at the center of politics, both democracy and totalitarianism have come to stand on the common ground of “politics that manages life.” Of course, the two are not identical. However, isn’t the possibility that humans can easily justify their own actions based on this common ground?
In the case of Nazi Germany, racial theory, anti-Semitism, and social Darwinism combined to lead to “ethnic cleansing,” forced sterilization, the “euthanasia program (Operation T4),” and extermination camps. There, the extinction of “lives that should not exist” itself became the objective. On the other hand, when discussing Japan’s wartime system, frameworks such as eugenics, the emperor system, and the family system are often emphasized. However, if this weakens the view of the fact that Japan pushed the people of Asia outside the realm of “lives that should be protected,” then it will lead to another oversight. The films The Korean Patriotic Corps and The Hainan Island Yuetang Village Massacre document this very reality.
Japan did not possess extermination camps comparable to those of the Holocaust. However, what happened on Hainan Island shows the reality that the people of Asia were treated as “lives that could be killed without consequence.” There is a problem there that cannot be grasped by eugenics alone. Rather, it must be considered as a problem of sovereign power and biopolitics.
Like everyone else, I want a better life. That is why, when I see these images, I think, “What a terrible thing they did.” But at the same time, I cannot help but think: If society suddenly turns into a state of emergency, will I be able to maintain the same will to resist as I do now? Now is that turning point. I cannot answer that question with confidence. What I fear is precisely this about myself: that I cannot say with absolute certainty that I would never become a perpetrator.
The archive can be viewed at the following link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqrXSnYTPyo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=logaQ1n_glk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0038zvBPYEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XytsZz1Pq48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro23nOisMck