Japanese Obsession

The Department of Justice ruled last week that Koreans need not register as enemy aliens. Austro-Hungarians and Hungarians are also exempt, but Koreans are a special case. About the only people who know Koreans in the U.S. are other Koreans. The U.S. knows little about them; it does not know, for example, that Koreans have the unique distinction of getting on Japanese nerves.

The Korean peninsula, thrusting down into the Yellow Sea to within 100 miles of Japan, is more than a Japanese problem. It is a Japanese obsession. With an older culture than the Japanese (whom they helped civilize), Koreans are traditionally pastoral, home-loving. Since 1910 Japan's policy has been a queer combination of savage repression and grotesque attempts to mollify the people.

Japanese crushed "uprisings" when observers could see none. Soon--in 1919, 1923, 1931--they had to deal with the real thing. The Society of Heroes worked for independence by violence, especially assassination, if possible by the knife; the Exploding Party, also working for independence, chose the bomb. Most shocking revelation of Japan's fear of Koreans came in the Tokyo earthquake. Then, because the rumor grew that Koreans were taking advantage of the disaster to blow up bridges, cut wires, Japanese went into a wave of hysteria that made the Orson Welles broadcast scare look like a session of the Supreme Court. When it was over, at least 500 (perhaps as many as 5,000) Koreans living in Tokyo had been slaughtered.

Since there are only 9,000 Koreans in the U.S. and Hawaii, last week's ruling did not directly affect many people. But it told the world--and especially the Far East--that anybody who so unnerved the Japanese could not be counted an enemy alien.

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