Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea

I realized I had not studied the Japanese occupation of Korea as much as I should have so I got this book which is really good and was surprising in that not all Korean people hated the Japanese. Some just adapted as best as they could and didn't really try to fight back.

The book is around 160 pages in length and includes some photographs. A lot of the book consists of stories of individual people which makes it even more interesting. The book is divided into two portions, Change by Choice and Change by Coercion.

Some of the most interesting parts that I found include the following:

1. There were some Japanese that thought the Kanto earthquake of 1923 was actually caused by the Koreans. That sounds about as dumb as some of the things being said by politicians and others today.

2. The Japanese did not trust Koreans during WWII so they didn't give them any weapons to fight with. Rather they used them for labor thus freeing up some Japanese so they they actually join the fight.

3. There's a discussion about whether some Koreans were collaborating with the Japanese or just seizing an opportunity to advance themselves.

4. The Japanese ran opium farms in Korea.

5. One Korean writes about how he went to Nanking and saw corpses piled high.

6. There was a form of "thought police" in Korea.

7. Koreans were forced to try to become Japanese in their thoughts and deeds. In 1938 they were forced to speak only Japanese and in 1940 they had to change their names to Japanese.

8. There is also some discussion about the comfort women.

Thus, you can see that this book is filled with information about how the Japanese behaved in Korea, something which doesn't seem to have gotten the attention it deserves.

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