1. The Korean national flag first appeared in 1882. The Japanese prohibited the Koreans from displaying the flag, and punished those who did. The most famous incidences of Korean defiance were during the March First (1919) and the June Tenth (1926) movements, and in 1936 when Korean newspapers superimposed the flag over the Japanese flag donning the shirt of the Berlin Olympics marathon winner, who was Korean but participated on the Japanese team.

2. Joint Intelligence Study Publishing Board. 1992, “Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Study of Korea (Including Tsushima and Quelpart); People and Government (April 1945),” in Yi Kilsang, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip [Documents on pre-liberation and post-liberation history] vol. 1 (Seoul: Wonju munhwasa, 1992), 271. The figures quoted in this study are probably dated, as the war prevented Japanese from publishing statistics after 1942. Edward Wagner estimates of that there were 2.4 million Koreans in Japan in 1945 in his The Korean Minority in Japan, 1904-1950 (New York: Institice of Pacific Relations, 1951). More recently, Nishinarita Yutaka calculated 2,206,541 Koreans in Japan when the war ended. Nishinarita Yutaka, Zainichi Chōsenjin no “sekai” to “teikoku” kokka (The “World” of the Japan-based Korean and the “Imperial” State) (Tokyo: Tokyo daigaku shuppankai, 1998), 42.

3. “Report on the Occupation Area of South Korea Since Termination of Hostilities, Part One: Political (September 1947),” in Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 488.

4. From around 1947 U.S. officials began listing Japan's Korean population at 800,000. This increase from 600,000 to 650,000 was probably to account for the estimated 200,000 Koreans thought to have entered Japan illegally since the American Occupation began.

5. Sunny Che, Forever Alien: A Korean Memoir, 1930-1951 (Jefferson: McFarland, 2000), chapter 18.

6. The United States put much more effort in reconstructing Japan than southern Korea. This bias reflected historical differences on how the U.S. viewed Japanese and Koreans. Koreans correctly interpreted the more favorable attitude that Americans held toward the Japanese people as encouraged by the central role it saw a revitalized Japan playing in East Asian affairs. The main works in English on the U.S. Occupation in Japan are John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999; and Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy, trans. Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2002). For the U.S. Occupation of southern Korea see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Bonnie B. C. Oh, ed., Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945-1948 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002). Kim Kut'ae‘s Mi Kunch⊖ngŭi Hanguk t'ongch‘i [U.S. military administration's rule in Korea], (Seoul: Pagy⊖ngsa, 1992) offers a good overf%ew of the U.S. administration in southern Korea.

7. The differences in the Austrian and Korean occupations mirror differences in Soviet-U.S. relations that emerged following Franklin Roosevelt's untimely death in April 1945 and the ascent of President Harry Truman in his wake. While trusteeship apparently worked in Austria, it was met with hostile rejection, particularly among Korean c20servatives, in southern Korea. Efforts by the United States and the Soviet Union to implement the policy fizzled after a few meetings.

8. Sonia Ryang, “Introduction: On Korean Women in Japan, Past and Present,” in Jackie J. Kim. Hidden Treasures: Lives of First Generation Korean Women in Japan (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), xvi.

9. See Ken C. Kawashima's well-researched The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009).

10. See Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Exile to North Korea: Shadows From Japan's Cold War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

11. Military Intelligence Service, “Survey of Korea (15 June 1943),” in Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 30-32.

12. McCarthy, Charles W., Alvin F. Richardson, and Raymond E. Cox, “State-War-Navy Coordination Committee: Utilization of Koreans in the War Effort (April 23, 1945),” in Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 259, 261-62.

13. Opposition groups used the U.S. reliance on Japanese and Japanese-trained Koreans for many of its administrative duties to paint the U.S. Occupation as pro-Japanese, and thus anti-Korean. I address this issue in the context of lingering images of “Japanese-ness” in my “The Detritus of Empire: Images of “Japanese-ness “in Liberated Southern Korea, 1945-1950,” Occasional Papers No. 14 (Tokyo: Centre for Asian Studies, Rikkyo University, 2009).

14. For a summary of this interview see Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 191.

15. Ibid., 191-93.

16. Rhee and Kim's experiences abroad helped the two men develop language capacity and important contacts that benefited their rise to power.

17. A summary of this interview is found in Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 174-79.

18. One example involved rogue kenpeitai who caused trouble in the streets of southern Korean cities and the waterways separating Japan and Korea. For a review of this violence see Caprio, “The Detritus of Empire.”

19. A summary of this interview is found in Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 235.

20. Ibid., 193.

21. Research Department, Foreign Office, “Korea's Capacity for Independence, Historical Background (January 31, 1945),” in Yi, ed., Haebang ch⊖nhusa charyojip, 213-16.

22. Office of Strategic Services, “Aliens in Japan (June 29, 1945),” in Documents from Occupation of Japan, United States Planning Documents, 1942-1945, Reel 14 (3-C-11) (Tokyo: Japan National Diet Library).

23. See Kawashima, The Proletarian Gamble, 28-44.

24. Richard H. Mitchell writes of the “seasonal migration” that many Koreans participated in during the colonial period in his The Korean Minority in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 31. After the March first 1919 independence movement, Japanese authorities required Koreans planning to enter Japan to receive traveling papers from their local police station that stated their purpose for travel, thus making it illegal for any Korean to enter Japan without this permission.

25. Office of Strategic Services, “Aliens in Japan,” 4.

26. Ibid., 7-8.

27. Ibid., 19.

28. Ibid., 34-37.

29. Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 120-21; Kim, Mi Kunch⊖ng ŭi Hanguk t'ongch'i.

30. Ch'oe, Seog-Ui, Zainichi no genfūkei: rekishi, bunka, hito [Original landscapes of Japan-based Koreans: history, culture, people] (Tokyo: Akaishi shoten, 2004), 40.

31. Kim, Hidden Treasures, 57, 149.

32. Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Basic Directive for Post-Surrender Military Government in Japan Proper (November 3, 1945).” “Division of Special Records, Foreign Office.”

33. For a study on Korean entrepreneurial collaboration see Carter Eckert, Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876-1945 (Seattle: University of Washington, 1991). The issue of colonial-era collaboration is one that continues to haunt the Korean people to this day, primarily because its early efforts to identify and punish these people never progressed. Over the past few years the Korean government has organized a special parliamentary commission to compile a list of Korean collaborators. A number of private studies have compiled biographies of Koreans believed to have been collaborators. For an interesting discussion on Korean collaboration see Koen De Ceuster, “Through the Master's Eye: Colonized Mind and Historical Consciousness in the Case of Yun Ch'iho (1865-1945), Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung 27 (2003): 107-31.

34. Allied forces identified 148 Koreans and 173 Taiwanese as war criminals, and condemned 23 Koreans and 21 Taiwanese to death. See Utsumi Aiko, Kimu wa naze sabakareta no ka: Chōsenjin BC kyū senpan no kiseki [Why was Kim Tried?: The Locus of Kor%2n BC Class War Criminals] (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2008).

35. “Report on the Occupation of South Korea Since Termination of Hostilities,” in Yi, ed., Haebang chŏnhusa charyojip, 519. For discussion on the limitations of the Interim Legislative Assembly see Kim Kut'ae, Mi Kunch⊖ng ŭi Hanguk t'ongch'i, 333-35.

36. Merrell H. Benninghoff, “Draft Statement Prepared for President Truman (September 15, 1945),” Foreign Relations United States: Korea, 6: The Far East and China (Washington, D.C.: Government Publishing Office, 1960), 1049.

37. In Japan one of the largest displays of this attitude took place in Kobe in April 1948 after the U.S. Occupation administration instructed the Japanese government to close Korean ethnic schools. (Mark E. Caprio, “The Cold War Hits Kobe—The 1948 Korean Ethnic School ‘Riots’,” Japan Focus November 2008.) In southern%inKorea following liberation Koreans first targeted their local Shinto shrine for destruction before attacking police boxes and government offices run by pro-Japanese Korean collaborators. See Caprio, “The Detritus of Empire.”

38. “Jacobs to Secretary of State: Press Release by General John R. Hodge” (June 16, 1948), Internal Affairs of Korea, vol. 9, 493.

39. “Ilbon cheguk'i buhwal inga?” [Is Imperial Japan being revived?], Kukminbo (December 21, 1949).

40. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2000), 20.

41. George F. Kennan, Memoirs; 1925-1950 (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1967), 375.

42. Richard L-G Deverall, Red Star over Japan (Calcutta: Temple Press, 1952), 256.

43. Diplomatic Section GHQ SCAP, “Staff Study Concerning Koreans in Japan (August 16, 1948),” in Records o the United States Department of State (Reel 3). (Tokyo: National Diet Library).

44. Lori Watt writes that Japanese repatriating from colonial territories faced harsh discrimination from their fellow Japanese. Many had few alternatives but to work black market stalls. See her When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 7.

45. G-2 Periodic Reports, November 3, 1945. G-2 Periodic Reports are found in Mi Kukgun tonggun sary⊖ngbu G-2 iril ch⊖ngbu yoyak (Far East Command, U.S. Army G-2 Daily Intelligence Summary) (Seoul: Hallim Taehakkyo Asia munhwa y⊖n'guso Hallim University, 1999).

46. See Hiromitzu Inokuchi, “Korean Ethnic Schools in Occupied Japan, 1945-52,” in Sonia Ryang ed., Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin (London: Routledge, 2000); and Yukiko Koshiro, Transpacific Racisms and the US Occupation of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

47. Richard B. Finn, Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 238.

48. Headquarters XXIV Corps, “Memorandum for Commanding General: Transmitting Report of Conversation with President, Korean Residents Union in Japan, on Koreans in Japan (August 18, 1948),” Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Korea 9. (Seoul: Arŭm, 1995), 573-74. For a review of the image of Koreans as communists see Kobayashi Tomoko, “GHQ no zainichi Chōsenjin ninshiki ni kan suru ikkōsatu” [One consideration of GHQ's perception of Koreans], Chōsenshi kenkyūkai ronbunshū 32 (October 1994), 165-192.

49. Headquarters XXIV Corps, “Memorandum for Commanding General.”

50. “Critical Refugee Situation (26 December 1945),” in F.E. Gillette pogos⊖ [F.E. Gillette written reports] vol. 1, (Seoul: Hallim Taehakkyo Asia munhwa y⊖n'guso Hallim University, 1996), 370-73.

51. G-2 Periodic Reports, January 29, 1946.

52. G-2 Periodic Reports, November 7, 1945.

53. Interview, July 15, 2005.

54. Diplomatic Section GHQ SCAP, “Staff Study.” UN national status allowed for supplementary food rations, immunity against Japanese taxes, and special legal protection. It also guaranteed in full the bank deposits of people under this category. One of the arguments against allowing Koreans this status were the heavy costs the Occupation would have to shoulder to provide them with the extra food rations.

55. The Korean nationality law (Public Act No. 11 May 1948) “provides that any person whose father is Korean as well as any person whose mother is Korean and whose father either is unknown or has no nationality shall have Korean nationality; Koreans whose names are entered in a Japanese family register [primarily Korean women married to Japanese and their children] and who have canceled or in the future cancel their registry shall be considered restored to Korean nationality.” Ibid., 2.

56. Ibid., 3-4.

57. A report authored in April 1949 valued 100,000 yen at $370.37. The 100,000 won that Koreans would receive in exchange was worth even less ($222.22). John Muccio to the Secretary of State, “Status of Koreans in Japan (April 13, 1949), in Records of the United States Department of State (Reel 3), (Tokyo: National Diet Library), 2.

58. Diplomatic Section GHQ SCAP. 1948. “Staff Study,” 10-12. The rift between the United States and the Soviet Union kept the DPRK and the ROK out of the United Nations as both held veto rights in the Security Council. The two Koreans were finally admitted in 1991.

59. Chief of Staff to Diplomatic Section, “Status of Koreans in Japan (August 29, 1948),” in Records of the United States Department of State (Reel 3), (Tokyo: National Diet Library). A February 1949 memorandum confirmed that SCAP had issued the Japanese government a directive regarding this revision. “Memorandum: Status of Koreans in Japan, February 18, 1949,” in ibid.

60. Diplomatic Section GHQ SCAP, “Staff Study,” 10.

61. “Political Adviser for Japan to Chief of Staff, “Memorandum: Status of Koreans in Japan, August 15, 1949, in Records of the United States Department of State. Syngman Rhee's statement is quoted in a February 18, 1949 memorandum of the same title authored by the United States Foreign Service, is found in ibid.

62. Cheong Sung-Hwa, The Politics of Anti-Japanese Sentiment in Korea: Japanese-South Korean Relations Under the American Occupation, 1945-1952 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 106-07.

63. Ibid., 126-27.

64. For a description of the Ōmura detention center see Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North Korea, 124-25. Her more recent research has confirmed that all detainees were slated for “repatriation” to the DPRK, although there is no guarantee that all made it (personal correspondence, September 11, 2009).

65. One SCAP memorandum makes reference to “volunteers from Japan” being used in the war. It notes that the Korean Mission requested that these soldiers be released to the ROK army should their services no longer be needed by the U.S. Army. “Memorandum: SCAP to the Chief of the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan, Korean Volunteers (February 13, 1951),” The Syngman Rhee Presidential Papers, Yonsei University, File 646.

66. Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun (New York: Norton, 1997), 221. Soon after this flood of refugees reached Japan's shores the U.S. finalized the first Alien Registration Act. See Robert Ricketts, Chōsen sensō zengo ni okeru zainichi Chōsenjin seisaku [Policy Toward Japan-based Koreans Around the Time of the Korean War] in Chōsen sensō to Nihon [The Korean War and Japan], edited by Ōnuma Hisao (Tokyo: Shinkansha, 2006), 208-11. Ricketts presents a comprehensive review of U.S. and Japanese policy towards Japan's Korean population in this chapter.

67. For illegal Korean entry into Japan during the Occupation see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to the Occupation Forces: Migration Controls and Korean Residents in Post-Surrender Japan,” Japanese Studies 24, no. 1 (May 2004): 5-28.

68. Ch'oe Seog-Ui, Zainichi no genfūkei, 42. Interview, July 15, 2005.

69. Anonymous, “Letter to the Enemy Property Control Office from the Resident of in Apartment House, Pusan (July 10, 1947),” in F.E. Gillette pogos⊖, 318.

70. Dai, Suyung, “A Petition for Rescue of the Refugees, To the Military Governor of Kyong Sang Nam Do,” (December 17, 1946). “In ibid., 406-07.

71. Reported in the G-2 Periodic Reports, October 21, 1945.

72. “Lerch to Chairman, Korean Interim Legislative Assembly (February 5, 1947),” F.E. Gillette pogos⊖, 109-10.

73. A 1947 letter signed by eleven US soldiers stationed in Korea complained that the “living conditions are some of the worst they have yet experienced,” a telling statement considering that these soldiers had arrived in Korea from Okinawa. (See Cecil Brown, “Correspondence with Major General F. L. Parks (May 19, 1947),” in John R. Hodge muns⊖jip [John R. Hodge papers] 1945.6-1948.8, vol. 2 (Seoul:%kkHallim Taehakkyo Asia munhwa y⊖n'guso, Hallim University, 1995), 178.

74. Headquarters, USAMGIK. 1996. “Press Releases (December 10, 1946),” in F.E. Gillette pogos⊖, 81. For a study on the postwar food situation in Japan see Steven J. Fuchs, “Feeding the Japanese: Food Policy, Land Reform, and Japan's Economic Recovery,” in Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society, edited by Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita, 26-47 (London: Routledge, 2007).

75. South Korean Inter2C Government, “Termination of Summer Grains Collection Program (October 22, 1947),” in ibid., 172.

76. D. W. Kermode, “Enclosure for Dispatch No. 361 (August 29, 1946),” Internal Affairs of Korea, vol. 1, 111.

77. This rumor apparently held some truth, as evident in a number of G-2 Periodic Reports. On October 16, 1946, for example, these reports noted a police report that informed of merchants paying bribes to “water police” to be able to export rice.

78. Interview, July 15, 2005.

79. John R. Hodge, “Conditions in Korea (September 13, 1945),” in John R. Hodge muns⊖jip, vol. 3, 3-5.

80. “Critical Refugee Situation, 26 December 1945.” in F.E. Gillette pogos⊖, 371.

81. Seo Geun-Sik, “Zainichi Chōsenjin no rekishiteki keisei” [The historical formation of Japan-based Koreans], in Zainichi Chōsenjin: rekishi, genjō, tenbō [Japan-based Koreans: history, contemporary situation, and outlook], edited by Pak Chongmy⊖ng, (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 1999), 95.

82. Nishinarita Yutaka, Zainichi Chōsenjin, 43; De Vos, George and Daekyun Chung, “Community Life in a Korean Ghetto,” in Koreans in Japan: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation, edited by Changsoo Lee and George De Vos (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 226.

83. Kim Ch⊖l-ung, “Zainichi Chōsenjin no keizai mondai” [Economic problems of the Japan-based Korean], in Pak Chongmy⊖ng (ed.) Zainichi Chōsenjin, 108.

84. Indeed, the Korean media occasionally warned Japan-based Koreans to brush up on their Korean language and culture skills should they consider returning.

85. Sonia Ryang, Korian diasupora: zainichi Chōsenjin no aidentiti [Korean Diaspora: Identity of Koreans in Japan], trans. Nakanishi Kyōko (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2005).