Ⓒ JoongAng Ilbo / JoongAng Ilbo Japanese version2022.07.07 07:54
August 15 is approaching. One of the long-standing controversies is to find the most important cause of Japan’s surrender. There is also a claim that the use of the US atomic bomb brought about the surrender of Japan, which claimed a decisive battle on the mainland and a 100 million special attack, and there was also a claim that the participation of the Soviet army, which was severely damaged by war criminals and suffered great damage to the war criminals, became a decisive opportunity. be.
It is not easy to determine which of the two factors is the more important cause of the surrender of Japan, but it is clear from the emperor’s surrender broadcast that the atomic bomb gave an important name. By the way, another noteworthy point is that the use of nuclear weapons became an important debate in the Japanese war crimes trial. The war crimes trial held in Tokyo in 1946 was legitimate to everyone.
Not only did Japan start the war first, but it had no name for it. The Japanese government claimed that it was a self-defense measure against the US oil and other resource embargoes, but that was just an excuse. If Japan did not make an unreasonable expansion after the 1894 Sino-Japanese War, there was no reason to suffer from resource depletion. Moreover, many genocide cases occurred during the expansion of Japanese power.
◇ The Allied Powers Lost in the Name of Victory
Still, unlike expectations, the process of war crimes trials was not smooth. There were three main types of war crimes trials. It was an anti-peace crime, an anti-humanitarian crime, and a customary war crime. However, all three issues had a problematic basis.
The first problem was that there was no precedent for defining the invasion against peace as a crime. The war criminal’s defense counsel has stated that he will only apply the crime of aggression to the defeated nation from the standpoint of the victorious nation. Not only that, the issue of anti-humanitarianism was not just a problem for Germany and Japan. It was an issue that was all related to the Allies that ran the colony. The Allies were also involved in many aggression and anti-humanitarian crimes in the process of governing the colonies.
Another issue was the issue of strategic bombing during the war process. Unlike the tactical bombing carried out on the front line, the strategic bombing had the purpose of breaking the fighting spirit of the other country by adding indiscriminate bombing to the civilian residential area. Strategic bombings on Germany’s Hamburg and Dresden, and Japan’s Tokyo are typical examples, and the dropping of the atomic bomb was part of the strategic bombing.
Strategic bombing meant cutting off the supply of industrial supplies mobilized for the war by defeating the industrial facilities of the other country. However, because there were residential facilities and commercial areas where many workers lived around the industrial facilities, the strategic bombing had to cause many victims.
Strategic bombing and the use of atomic bombs were rationalized to reduce the damage to young people in their own country on the front lines during the war. The strategy was to break the will of the hostile nation and end the war promptly. And from the standpoint of the Allied Powers, which suffered great damage such as Pearl Harbor, they received great cheers as a point of retaliation against the war criminals. However, due to the civilian damage caused by this, war criminal lawyers argued that there was no significant difference between Japanese anti-humanitarian crimes and strategic bombing.
Strategic bombing is sometimes evaluated as having failed to play a substantial role in ending the war. North Korea during the Korean War and North Korea during the Vietnam War were the areas most affected by strategic bombing, but strategic bombing could not bring out the surrender of North Korea and North Vietnam. Some experts question whether Japan would have surrendered early if the Soviet troops had not participated in the war.
◇ An unprecedented term for claims
In the process of discussing the conclusion of the Korea-Japan Agreement in 1965, the conflict between actual profit and name was once again on the test stand. At that time, the Korean government needed funds and technology for rapid economic growth. Japan also needed cooperation between Korea and Japan due to security issues due to the Cold War system.
The South Korean government wanted to receive compensation for the robbery that occurred during the Japanese Empire’s occupation. However, Japan developed South Korea throughout the colonial era, and immediately after the collapse, the U.S. military government confiscated the personal property of the Japanese who was in South Korea, and the property was transferred to the Korean government, so the Japanese personal property was confiscated. Insisted that he had to be compensated. In the 1951 San Francisco Lecture Treaty, Japan signed that it would accept all US military policies since 1945.
As South Korea continued to demand compensation, the Japanese government first named it an independence congratulatory money, and later named it a claim, a name that had never been heard or seen. It means that the Korean government requested and received it. Article 2 of the Claims Funding Agreement stipulates that the claim issue between the two Contracting Parties and the people has finally been resolved. Word games such as “already,” “final,” and “irreversible” are dancing between the Korea-Japan treaties.