2 testify to Sakhalin massacre by Japanese

The government has secured testimony from two ethnic Koreans living on Sakhalin Island, off Russia’s east coast, that Japanese soldiers massacred Koreans there at the end of World War II.

It is the first testimony to provide details of a massacre allegedly perpetrated by the Japanese army on the island, the National Archives of Korea said Tuesday.

The testimony came months after the agency released a report written by a Soviet Union official in 1946 that suggested a large-scale massacre of Koreans. According to the report, 10,229 Koreans lived in Esutoru, a port town in northwestern Sakhalin, before World War II, but the number decreased to 5,332 in 1946. It noted that killings by the Japanese military could be one of the reasons for the decline of the Korean population.

The agency said the two ethnic Koreans ― 78-year-old Hwang Soon-yeong and 72-year-old Lee Tae-yeop ― testified that they heard stories from eyewitnesses of some of the killings that took place in the summer of 1945 in Esutoru.

According to Hwang, on August 20, 1945, right after the Japanese lost the war, soldiers dragged out her uncle and his younger sibling and stabbed them to death with the sharp end of a branch. She said her aunt watched the killings while hiding with her then 3-year-old son.

Lee, who was five years old at the time, said his neighbor told him in August 1945 that a man was stabbed to death by Japanese soldiers just because he refused the soldiers’ orders to make bamboo spears for them. His son was also killed while trying to stop them from killing his father. The Japanese soldiers forced Koreans to make bamboo spears for use in fighting against the Soviet military.

“While tracing records on the massacre of Koreans in Esutoru, we were able to obtain detailed accounts of when and where the killings took place,” said Lee Kang-soo, a researcher from the agency.

“Previous accounts of the killings were mostly vague, but these testimonies will serve as a stepping stone for recognizing the massacre of Koreans in Esutoru as a historical fact.”

Millions of Koreans were forcibly drafted overseas as laborers for Japanese firms and the military during the 1910-1945 colonial rule. Sakhalin was under Japanese control when the killings took place. <The Korea Times/Na Jeong-ju>