靖国神社の戦没者が何と生きていた [社会]
靖国神社の戦没者が何と生きていた
靖国神社に祭られている戦没者のリストにまだ生きている人の名前が載っているというニュースをアメリカのロサンゼルス・タイムズ紙が報道しています。
このニュースは日本ではあまり報道されていないようなので、ここにその内容を紹介します。
A South Korean's unwanted war legacy from Japan
１９９４年、当時まだ１０代であったキム・フイジョンさんは、突然日本軍の兵士によって村から拉致され、サイパン島に送られてトンネル堀などの強制労働をさせられることになった。
現在、８６歳になるキムさんは今でも戦場で爆撃によって鼓膜がひどくやられたことや、屈辱的な捕虜生活のことなどが夢の中に出てくるという。
そのキムさんは２００５年に突然、耐えがたい屈辱を新たに受けることになったのである。
何とキムさんの名前が、靖国神社に祀られている日本軍戦没者のリストに、日本政府の行政上のミスによって載っているというのである。戦争犯罪者も祀られている靖国神社に自分祀られていることに、キムさんはもう黙ってはいられなくなり、日本の裁判所に控訴することにした。
キムさんは語る。
「私は日本のために戦ったことは一度もない。私は日本軍による強制労働者だったのだ。靖国神社の戦没者名リストに私の名前が載っていることは、私にとって大変屈辱的なことであり、個人にとっても国にとっても不名誉なことである。私は戦争犯罪者でもなく、死者でもないのだ。」
２００７年、キムさんは靖国神社と日本政府に対して、訴訟を起こし、自分と他の４人の韓国人強制労働者の名前を戦没者のリストから削除するように求めた。
靖国神社の戦没者のリストには２１０００人の韓国人徴収兵の名前が含まれているが、生存者はキムさんただ一人である。
２００７年に訴訟を起こしてから、これまでに生存していた４人の徴収兵が亡くなった。
「靖国神社は軍国主義のシンボルだ。韓国人徴集兵士の名前を日本人戦没者名リストに載せることは、死者の霊の奴隷になることで、これでは死んでも浮かばれない」とキムさんは語る。
今年の７月、日本の裁判所はキムさんの控訴を、キムさんの名前が戦没者のリストに載ったのは靖国神社側の避けられなかったミスで、人権や道徳的な利害を侵害するものではないとして棄却した。
キムさんは上訴する意向だ。
「私はまだ生きているんだ。その私がどうして死者として靖国神社に祭られなければならないのか」とキムさんは話す。
※１９４４年６月１９日、サイパン島の日本軍はアメリカ軍に攻撃に会い、キムさんや他の韓国人徴集兵たちはアメリカ軍の捕虜として捕えられた。
ハワイで捕虜生活を送っていたキムさんは、ある日アメリカ兵に、もう祖国に帰ってもいいと言われた。日本が戦争に負けたからだという。
その後アメリカ政府はキムさんを飛行機でソウルまで送ってくれて、キムさんはようやく普通の生活を手にすることができたのだ。
A South Korean's unwanted war legacy from Japan
Reporting from Seoul— For most of his life, Kim Hui-jong has kept what he considers a shameful secret. In 1944, as a teenager, he was abducted from his village in northern Korea by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II military camp on the island of Saipan.
It would take him a decade of marriage to tell his wife about his past. Kim, 86, still often dreams of the battlefield shelling that severely damaged his hearing and the taunts of his captors: "You Koreans are like canned meat; we can take you anywhere and use you as we see fit."
He always considered his Japanese enslavement, and the two years he later spent as a U.S. prisoner of war, as a lifelong humiliation. Then, in 2005, Kim received a new insult he insists he still cannot bear: For decades, the former conscript learned, he has been counted among Japan's war dead and, because of an administrative error, his name is listed at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni shrine. He could no longer remain silent.
Many view Yasukuni as a symbol of Japanese militarist values that led millions to their deaths. Worse, Kim and other critics say, Shinto priests who control the shrine list Japanese leaders executed as war criminals in its ranks of the dead.
Located in the center of Tokyo, the 142-year-old shrine — with its soothing lanterns and elegant rice-paper walls — each year draws millions of visitors who tour its temples and adjoining war museum. Over the years, Tokyo politicians paying their respects to the deceased soldiers have angered Chinese and South Koreans who suffered under Japanese occupation.
But none, perhaps, more than Kim. A slim man with delicate features, Kim recently sat on the bed of his home in a working-class Seoul neighborhood, furious over his inclusion at Yasukuni.
"I never fought for the Japanese; I was a forced laborer," he said, his voice weak after recent heart surgery. "This has brought me so much shame. It's a personal and national dishonor. I am neither a war criminal nor a dead man."
In 2007, Kim filed a lawsuit against the Yasukuni shrine and the Japanese government, demanding they remove his name and those of four other forced laborers from Korea.
Three times the men went to Tokyo to testify, always gathering at the shrine for protests. On one visit, a Japanese reporter asked Kim his opinion of the memorial.
"I told her she wasn't going to like my answer," he said. "I said I wanted to light a truckload of gasoline there, that I'd feel satisfied if they dropped not one but two atomic bombs on the place."
***
For more than three decades, between 1910 and 1945, Japan colonized the Korean peninsula — its soldiers occupying what is today both North and South Korea. One morning in 1944, during a walk in his village outside Pyongyang, Kim had a life-changing run-in with the occupying military.
A Japanese soldier waved him over, barking commands. A Japanese-language student in his youth, Kim said, he immediately grasped what had befallen him. He was being conscripted.
Kim was ordered to join tens of thousands of other young Koreans to assist the Japanese military. He was soon aboard a flotilla of ships heading toward Saipan.
Never issued a gun, he dug ditches and tunnels, he recalled, adding that he escaped torture by guards because he quickly understood their orders. During one U.S. attack, Kim recalled, the conscripts were ordered to run for nearby caves to avoid capture by the Americans.
"One conscript stopped me," he said. "He said: 'Don't go there. The Japanese are going to lock you all in and dynamite the cave.' " But in the fog of battle, the Korean workers were spared.
In another U.S. attack, a shell exploded near Kim's head, shattering his eardrums. On June 19, 1944, he and hundreds of other Koreans were captured as noncombatant prisoners.
For two years, Kim served as a U.S. prisoner of war. He showed his "Individual P.O.W. Labor Record" with the amount of pay for his labors in U.S. internment camps.
One day at a camp in Hawaii, he recalled, a U.S. soldier told him to go home. When Kim questioned him, the American held up his arms in the symbol of surrender, saying the Japanese had given up.
His eyes teared at the memory.
The U.S. government flew him back to Seoul, where he carved out an ordinary life, though scarred by his wartime suffering. He worked as a low-level government employee until his retirement in 1973. "He could never get promoted — his hearing always held him back," said his wife, Hui-boon, 79, who communicates with her husband by shouting in his ear.
In 2005, a South Korean documentary film team informed him of his inclusion at Yasukuni and helped pay for several visits to the Japanese court and for the Yasukuni protests. Upon learning of his intent to see his name deleted, Kim said, workers wouldn't allow him to enter the temple to observe his nameplate among the 2.4 million listed there.
Yasukuni officials did not respond to interview requests. But in the past, Shinto priests have insisted that they hold complete religious autonomy on who is enshrined at Yasukuni, where officials call the inclusion "permanent and irreversible."
Kim Min-cheol, director of the Korea Council for Redress and Reparation for the Victims of World War II Atrocities, says the names of 21,000 Korean conscripts are included at Yasukuni, but that Kim is the only one still alive. Since the lawsuit was filed in 2007, the other four living conscripts listed there have died.
"Yasukuni is a symbol of imperialism," he said. "To include conscripted Koreans is enslaving the spirit of the deceased. They won't be able to find peace, even in death."
***
Last month, Kim's wait ended with a phone call from Korean activists. A Japanese court had rejected his request.
Kim's inclusion at the shrine, a judge explained, "was an unavoidable mix-up by the shrine, and does not infringe upon his human rights and moral interests."
Japanese press reports said Tokyo courts have dismissed similar lawsuits, ruling that the Japanese constitution guarantees religious freedom. Judges believed they had no jurisdiction over Yasukuni, which is a religious shrine, the reports said.
One of Kim's Japanese lawyers blasted the ruling, telling reporters: "I feel ashamed as a Japanese citizen."
Kim said he would appeal. Talking about the case, his soft eyes harden. "When I talked with the Japanese court, I said, 'I may be an old man, but I'm still alive,' " Kim said. "I asked, 'Why am I enshrined among the dead?' "
(Los Angels Times 2011/08/14)
靖国神社に祭られている戦没者のリストにまだ生きている人の名前が載っているというニュースをアメリカのロサンゼルス・タイムズ紙が報道しています。
このニュースは日本ではあまり報道されていないようなので、ここにその内容を紹介します。
A South Korean's unwanted war legacy from Japan
１９９４年、当時まだ１０代であったキム・フイジョンさんは、突然日本軍の兵士によって村から拉致され、サイパン島に送られてトンネル堀などの強制労働をさせられることになった。
現在、８６歳になるキムさんは今でも戦場で爆撃によって鼓膜がひどくやられたことや、屈辱的な捕虜生活のことなどが夢の中に出てくるという。
そのキムさんは２００５年に突然、耐えがたい屈辱を新たに受けることになったのである。
何とキムさんの名前が、靖国神社に祀られている日本軍戦没者のリストに、日本政府の行政上のミスによって載っているというのである。戦争犯罪者も祀られている靖国神社に自分祀られていることに、キムさんはもう黙ってはいられなくなり、日本の裁判所に控訴することにした。
キムさんは語る。
「私は日本のために戦ったことは一度もない。私は日本軍による強制労働者だったのだ。靖国神社の戦没者名リストに私の名前が載っていることは、私にとって大変屈辱的なことであり、個人にとっても国にとっても不名誉なことである。私は戦争犯罪者でもなく、死者でもないのだ。」
２００７年、キムさんは靖国神社と日本政府に対して、訴訟を起こし、自分と他の４人の韓国人強制労働者の名前を戦没者のリストから削除するように求めた。
靖国神社の戦没者のリストには２１０００人の韓国人徴収兵の名前が含まれているが、生存者はキムさんただ一人である。
２００７年に訴訟を起こしてから、これまでに生存していた４人の徴収兵が亡くなった。
「靖国神社は軍国主義のシンボルだ。韓国人徴集兵士の名前を日本人戦没者名リストに載せることは、死者の霊の奴隷になることで、これでは死んでも浮かばれない」とキムさんは語る。
今年の７月、日本の裁判所はキムさんの控訴を、キムさんの名前が戦没者のリストに載ったのは靖国神社側の避けられなかったミスで、人権や道徳的な利害を侵害するものではないとして棄却した。
キムさんは上訴する意向だ。
「私はまだ生きているんだ。その私がどうして死者として靖国神社に祭られなければならないのか」とキムさんは話す。
※１９４４年６月１９日、サイパン島の日本軍はアメリカ軍に攻撃に会い、キムさんや他の韓国人徴集兵たちはアメリカ軍の捕虜として捕えられた。
ハワイで捕虜生活を送っていたキムさんは、ある日アメリカ兵に、もう祖国に帰ってもいいと言われた。日本が戦争に負けたからだという。
その後アメリカ政府はキムさんを飛行機でソウルまで送ってくれて、キムさんはようやく普通の生活を手にすることができたのだ。
A South Korean's unwanted war legacy from Japan
Reporting from Seoul— For most of his life, Kim Hui-jong has kept what he considers a shameful secret. In 1944, as a teenager, he was abducted from his village in northern Korea by Japanese soldiers and forced to dig tunnels at a World War II military camp on the island of Saipan.
It would take him a decade of marriage to tell his wife about his past. Kim, 86, still often dreams of the battlefield shelling that severely damaged his hearing and the taunts of his captors: "You Koreans are like canned meat; we can take you anywhere and use you as we see fit."
He always considered his Japanese enslavement, and the two years he later spent as a U.S. prisoner of war, as a lifelong humiliation. Then, in 2005, Kim received a new insult he insists he still cannot bear: For decades, the former conscript learned, he has been counted among Japan's war dead and, because of an administrative error, his name is listed at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni shrine. He could no longer remain silent.
Many view Yasukuni as a symbol of Japanese militarist values that led millions to their deaths. Worse, Kim and other critics say, Shinto priests who control the shrine list Japanese leaders executed as war criminals in its ranks of the dead.
Located in the center of Tokyo, the 142-year-old shrine — with its soothing lanterns and elegant rice-paper walls — each year draws millions of visitors who tour its temples and adjoining war museum. Over the years, Tokyo politicians paying their respects to the deceased soldiers have angered Chinese and South Koreans who suffered under Japanese occupation.
But none, perhaps, more than Kim. A slim man with delicate features, Kim recently sat on the bed of his home in a working-class Seoul neighborhood, furious over his inclusion at Yasukuni.
"I never fought for the Japanese; I was a forced laborer," he said, his voice weak after recent heart surgery. "This has brought me so much shame. It's a personal and national dishonor. I am neither a war criminal nor a dead man."
In 2007, Kim filed a lawsuit against the Yasukuni shrine and the Japanese government, demanding they remove his name and those of four other forced laborers from Korea.
Three times the men went to Tokyo to testify, always gathering at the shrine for protests. On one visit, a Japanese reporter asked Kim his opinion of the memorial.
"I told her she wasn't going to like my answer," he said. "I said I wanted to light a truckload of gasoline there, that I'd feel satisfied if they dropped not one but two atomic bombs on the place."
***
For more than three decades, between 1910 and 1945, Japan colonized the Korean peninsula — its soldiers occupying what is today both North and South Korea. One morning in 1944, during a walk in his village outside Pyongyang, Kim had a life-changing run-in with the occupying military.
A Japanese soldier waved him over, barking commands. A Japanese-language student in his youth, Kim said, he immediately grasped what had befallen him. He was being conscripted.
Kim was ordered to join tens of thousands of other young Koreans to assist the Japanese military. He was soon aboard a flotilla of ships heading toward Saipan.
Never issued a gun, he dug ditches and tunnels, he recalled, adding that he escaped torture by guards because he quickly understood their orders. During one U.S. attack, Kim recalled, the conscripts were ordered to run for nearby caves to avoid capture by the Americans.
"One conscript stopped me," he said. "He said: 'Don't go there. The Japanese are going to lock you all in and dynamite the cave.' " But in the fog of battle, the Korean workers were spared.
In another U.S. attack, a shell exploded near Kim's head, shattering his eardrums. On June 19, 1944, he and hundreds of other Koreans were captured as noncombatant prisoners.
For two years, Kim served as a U.S. prisoner of war. He showed his "Individual P.O.W. Labor Record" with the amount of pay for his labors in U.S. internment camps.
One day at a camp in Hawaii, he recalled, a U.S. soldier told him to go home. When Kim questioned him, the American held up his arms in the symbol of surrender, saying the Japanese had given up.
His eyes teared at the memory.
The U.S. government flew him back to Seoul, where he carved out an ordinary life, though scarred by his wartime suffering. He worked as a low-level government employee until his retirement in 1973. "He could never get promoted — his hearing always held him back," said his wife, Hui-boon, 79, who communicates with her husband by shouting in his ear.
In 2005, a South Korean documentary film team informed him of his inclusion at Yasukuni and helped pay for several visits to the Japanese court and for the Yasukuni protests. Upon learning of his intent to see his name deleted, Kim said, workers wouldn't allow him to enter the temple to observe his nameplate among the 2.4 million listed there.
Yasukuni officials did not respond to interview requests. But in the past, Shinto priests have insisted that they hold complete religious autonomy on who is enshrined at Yasukuni, where officials call the inclusion "permanent and irreversible."
Kim Min-cheol, director of the Korea Council for Redress and Reparation for the Victims of World War II Atrocities, says the names of 21,000 Korean conscripts are included at Yasukuni, but that Kim is the only one still alive. Since the lawsuit was filed in 2007, the other four living conscripts listed there have died.
"Yasukuni is a symbol of imperialism," he said. "To include conscripted Koreans is enslaving the spirit of the deceased. They won't be able to find peace, even in death."
***
Last month, Kim's wait ended with a phone call from Korean activists. A Japanese court had rejected his request.
Kim's inclusion at the shrine, a judge explained, "was an unavoidable mix-up by the shrine, and does not infringe upon his human rights and moral interests."
Japanese press reports said Tokyo courts have dismissed similar lawsuits, ruling that the Japanese constitution guarantees religious freedom. Judges believed they had no jurisdiction over Yasukuni, which is a religious shrine, the reports said.
One of Kim's Japanese lawyers blasted the ruling, telling reporters: "I feel ashamed as a Japanese citizen."
Kim said he would appeal. Talking about the case, his soft eyes harden. "When I talked with the Japanese court, I said, 'I may be an old man, but I'm still alive,' " Kim said. "I asked, 'Why am I enshrined among the dead?' "
(Los Angels Times 2011/08/14)
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