Investigating Tragedy at Sea – The Ukishima-maru Incident and its Legacy

Abstract

On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese port city of Ōminato with the apparent intention of delivering an undisclosed number of Koreans to Pusan, Korea. The laborers had been both recruited and conscripted for construction work necessary to fortify the naval base that had been strategically located in this remote location decades from the time of the 1905 Russo-Japanese War to monitor ship traffic between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Two days later, while skirting the Japan Sea/East Sea side of Honshu island, the ship suddenly detoured into Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto prefecture, where it exploded sending hundreds, perhaps thousands of Koreans, and 25 Japanese to their watery grave. While other ships met similar fates after the guns of the AsiaPacific wars fell silent, the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in the cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery. While the Japanese government insists that a sea mine sank the ship, Korean groups continue to maintain that it was the Japanese navy that intentionally caused the explosion to sink it. This paper aims to first identify the points of contention by following the ship from its Ōminato departure to its Maizuru sinking. It then considers the ramifications for the incident remaining unresolved. In what ways might Japan adopt more positive means toward assisting investigations that seek resolution and closure? Is non-resolution truly in its interests, or might its failure to resolve this incident (and other outstanding colonial-era issues) return to haunt the Japanese government? Does non-resolution strengthen the colonial narrative that Koreans have scripted that frames Japanese colonial-era ambitions as seeking a long-term goal of cultural genocide?

Full text

Investigating Tragedy at Sea:
The Ukishima-maru Incident and
its Legacy
MARK E. CAPRIO Professor, Rikkyo University1
Abstract
On August 22, 1945 the Ukushima-maru set sail from the northern Japanese
port city of minato with the apparent intention of delivering an undisclosed
number of Koreans to Pusan, Korea. The laborers had been both recruited and
conscripted for construction work necessary to fortify the naval base that had
been strategically located in this remote location decades from the time of the 1905
Russo-Japanese War to monitor ship trac between the islands of Honshu and
Hokkaido. Two days later, while skirting the Japan Sea/East Sea side of Honshu
island, the ship suddenly detoured into Maizuru Harbor in Kyoto prefecture,
where it exploded sending hundreds, perhaps thousands of Koreans, and 25
Japanese to their watery grave. While other ships met similar fates after the guns
of the AsiaPacic wars fell silent, the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in the
cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery. While the Japanese
government insists that a sea mine sank the ship, Korean groups continue to
maintain that it was the Japanese navy that intentionally caused the explosion
to sink it. This paper aims to rst identify the points of contention by following
the ship from its minato departure to its Maizuru sinking. It then considers the
ramications for the incident remaining unresolved. In what ways might Japan
adopt more positive means toward assisting investigations that seek resolution
and closure? Is non-resolution truly in its interests, or might its failure to resolve
this incident (and other outstanding colonial-era issues) return to haunt the
Japanese government? Does non-resolution strengthen the colonial narrative
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF
KOREAN STUDIES
VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019), pp. 81–104.

82 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
that Koreans have scripted that frames Japanese colonial-era ambitions as seeking
a long-term goal of cultural genocide?
Keywords: Korean History, Colonial Korea, Korean–Japanese Relations,
Unresolved Memory, Historical Disputes
Introduction
At around 17:10 on August 24, 1945, just over a week after the Japanese emperor
announced his country’s intention to accept the Allied forces’ surrender terms,
the Ukishima-maru suddenly exploded as it entered the western Japan port of
Maizuru. The explosion lifted the hull of the 114-meter, 4,730 ton transport ship
straight up from the water in an inverted V-shape before it plunged into the sea.
The ship had departed two days previous from the port town of minato, Aomori
Prefecture to repatriate thousands of Korean laborers. This tragic story did not
end with the ship’s sinking. Though other ships carrying repatriating peoples
would suer similar fates2 the Ukishima-maru incident is unique in that even its
most fundamental details—the cause of the explosion and the number of victims
it claimed—continues to be debated. Did the ship sink accidentally after contacting
a sea mine or did the Japanese navy intentionally destroy the vessel? Several
investigations, both private and public, have produced a number of publications,
documentaries, and lms that suggest Japanese guilt and Korean victimhood,
3
one of the more recent being the popular 2000 North Korean lm Souls Protest
(K. Sar’a innŭn ryŏnghondŭl, 2000, Director Kim Ch’in-song) discussed toward the
end of this paper. While the available evidence falls short of substantiating this
conclusion, less than enthusiastic cooperation by Japanese authorities to inves-
tigate the cause of the ship’s sinking, along with actions that suggest attempts to
impede these eorts, have strengthened suspicions of Japanese culpability for
the ship’s sinking and the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Korean
passengers.4
The incident has left in its wake several unresolved issues from the time
the Ukishima-maru set sail from the lonely northern Japanese port of minato:
explanation of why the ship departed so soon after the war’s end, before formal
repatriation operations had begun; the location of records that detail the number
of people who boarded the ship at the time of departure; the logic behind the
crew choosing the inecient, and potentially more dangerous, coastal route
over the more direct route across the open seas; and the reasoning and timing
behind its decision to detour into Maizuru Harbor rather than advance directly

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 83
to Pusan. Questions also remain about the explosion itself: whether the ship
was carrying explosives; the number of detonations; and the number of people
who perished from the incident. Suspicions of Japanese culpability strengthened
during eorts to investigate the incident: the premature reduction of the primary
piece of evidence, the Ukishima-maru, to scrap metal before it had been properly
examined, and claims of witness tampering.
Time has eroded most known material and memory evidence to all but
eliminate any chance of denitive conclusion being reached regarding the fate
of the Ukishima-maru. The incident, along with other unresolved colonial-era
atrocities, contributes to what Ann Stoler terms “imperial debris” of occupation
rule.5 Secondary “debris” of this incident is how the news of the ship’s sinking,
perhaps spread verbally by survivors who gravitated to Korean communities in
Japan, aected repatriating decisions by Japan-based Koreans. As the majority
of those directly aected by this incident have long passed, memories of this
debris are preserved through second generation recollections passed down by
the survivors and witnesses to the explosion, as well as through education institu-
tions such as museum displays, cinema scripts, and more recently Internet sites.
In the case of the Ukishima-maru these mediums tend to be utilized by victims’
groups, the collective memory that they create draws on a general feeling of
victimization that renders the possible as probable, or even veried, fact that
leaves little margin for debate over the possibility of alternative scenarios.
6
These
conclusions benet from a Japanese silence that has stubbornly resisted Korean
demands for cooperation. The Ukishima-maru incident on occasion nds its way
into Japanese courtrooms. The purpose of this paper is to explore the tragedy
of the Ukishima-maru as one example of this “imperial debris,” and to consider
the long- and short-term consequences of this and other such unresolved issues.
O
̅minato and its Korean Residents
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Koreans were recruited, and later
conscripted, for war-related work projects throughout Japan. One location for
such projects was in the city of minato in northern Aomori Prefecture rst to
extend a railway line and then to build facilities needed to protect a military
instillation. The minato Guard District (keibifu) was founded as a major Japanese
naval base around the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) to monitor ship
movement through the Tsugaru straits that separated the main Japanese islands
of Honshu and Hokkaido. During the Asia Pacic wars Japan used the base as
a springboard to attack Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands o of Alaska. The
United States responded by targeting the base for aerial bombing attacks.7 The

84 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
need to protect minato increased exponentially toward the end of the war as
defeat neared and the fear of Allied land invasion intensied. These threats led
to the Japanese military requisitioning the construction of the Kabayama airbase
to fortify the naval base.
The construction project required labor which the navy imported, primarily
that conscripted from the Korean peninsula but also from among “free” workers
recruited from dierent parts of Japan. Recruited labor may have diered from
“conscripted” labor in name but not necessarily in practice, as suggested in
Aoyama Torazō’s account of how he “recruited” Korean labor. Oered 15 yen for
every laborer he gathered, Aoyama turned rst to local village oces in Korea
for assistance in rounding up the laborers. He recalls, once Korean males had
assembled at a local hotel they were immediately issued work garb, the donning
of which certied them as “recruited laborers” to be dispatched via Pusan to
mines and factories in Japan.8 Kim Tongsŏp’s case informs of this process from
the Korean laborer’s perspective. Married with four children he was brought to
the local town oce in Korea’s South Ch’ungch’ong province where other Koreans
had been gathered to be “pulled [kkullyokatta] to Japan.” Upon arrival in minato
he was put to work at the Kabayama air base construction site where he was paid
70 won per month to lay a runway and build a large hanger for the airplanes.9
Laborers and their handlers remember the dicult situation that the Koreans
faced at the northern Japan site, conditions echoed by others who labored at other
work sites across the Japanese empire. The jobs to which they were assigned in
minato included their carving through Mt. Kamabuse to extend the railway and
through the area’s hilly terrain to construct runways and facilities required for
the new airbase, work assignments that were reportedly more dangerous than
the work assigned to their Japanese counterparts.
10
Working conditions were
Spartan. Kim Sŏngdae, who also hailed from Korea’s South Ch’ungch’ŏng province,
recalled the “terrible food and tiring working conditions that pushed him to the
limits of exertion.”
11
Yun Hwisu, who was assigned to level a hill to build the
aireld and later to construct a runway and a large hanger reports that the basic
necessities of food, clothing, and shelter were despicable, more appropriate for
cattle or pigs. Many injured laborers went without treatment. Yun saw little of
his 70-won monthly salary, which was deposited and recorded in a deposit book
that he (“stupidly”) lost.12
The housing provided for the laborers mirrored their harsh working
conditions. One son of a Japanese overseer veried that the structure that served
as the laborers living space resembled a dark “scallop shack” (hotate goya), the
space of which measured the equivalent of 2.5 tatami mats (approximately 15 x
7 feet). The Koreans collected grass and straw to make their bedding that they

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 85
laid out on a barren oor. These conditions alone caused an untold number of
deaths among the laborers.
Japanese residing in the area corroborated the Korean laborers’ recollections
of harsh treatment. Yamamoto Saburō remembers Koreans being addressed by
impersonal numbers rather than by their names (“Hey 7” or “Don’t slack o 6”).
Aoyama Torazō veried that while both Japanese and Koreans labored at the site,
the division of labor separated the two people, and ensured that Koreans were
assigned the more dangerous work. He noted that the workload and urgency to
complete the project intensied as the U.S. bombing raids became more frequent
and the fear of Allied land invasion increased accordingly.13 Corporal, and even
capital, punishment served as a control mechanism. Those caught trying to escape
faced severe beatings and even “public lynching.”14
It is probable that at one point records existed that contained the basic infor-
mation on the Koreans brought to minato, yet to date a complete record has not
surfaced. Most probably such documents were included in the postwar burnings.
The rising smoke reported by witnesses following defeat indicates that the Japanese
here, like in other parts of the empire, destroyed potentially damaging les prior
to the arrival of occupation troops.15 In the haste to relocate the Koreans from
minato it is quite possible that the Japanese never bothered to register the basic
information of those who boarded the Ukishima-maru, including whether any
Koreans refused to board the ship. Without this information there remains little
hope of ascertaining the number of laborers that the ill-fated ship carried, much
less how many of these Koreans succumbed after the ship sank in Maizuru Harbor.
The haste in which the Japanese sought to clear Koreans from the minato
area reected the panic that spread here and throughout the empire following the
emperor’s sudden announcement that Japan would accept the Allied surrender
demands. Japan’s uncertain future caused ill-founded rumors to rapidly spread
from this time. One elementary school teacher, Akimoto Ryōji, recalled one such
rumor that had “all commissioned ocers being arrested and exiled to Australia.”
This uncertainty no doubt led to predictions over how Koreans would react upon
learning of their country’s liberation. Would they seek vengeance? Would they
assist the approaching occupation armies? One Japanese witness recalls paranoia
setting in among the colonizers as Korean “manse!” [J. banzai, literally “live for
10,000 years] chants grew in volume as the now liberated laborers paraded
through the streets of minato.16
Japanese, in an attempt to encourage the Koreans to board the Ukishima-maru,
warned the laborers that they too faced punishment after the Allied forces arrived.
Yi Yŏngchul oered a dierent twist to the anticipated power shift. He believed,
to the contrary, that the Japanese feared that the Koreans would cooperate with

86 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
the occupying forces: “If the Americans began killing the Japanese it would be
the Koreans who helped them,” just like the Americans helped Koreans liberate
their country from Japanese rule.17 Was it the uncertainty over the now postwar
situation coupled with Japanese having to coexist among a sizeable, liberated
Korean population in this isolated part of Japan that encouraged the decision to
quickly relocate them? Or, was this decision a cost-saving measure: the Japanese
hoping to escape from having to compensate the Koreans for their labor and
from reimbursing the “savings” that the company automatically deducted from
their wages?18
Departure from O
̅minato and Detour into Maizuru
The Ukishima-maru was built in 1937 by the Osaka Merchant Ship Company to
transport people between Osaka and Okinawa. In September 1941 the Japanese navy
requisitioned the ship for wartime purposes. In this capacity it served as the primary
vessel along the Aomori (Honshu)—Hakodate (Hokkaido) run. Along this route,
in April 1945, the ship encountered torpedo attacks from Allied submarines.
19
On
August 15 the ship embarked for Hakodate on what its crewmembers believed would
be their last wartime mission. To their dismay they returned to Aomori to learn
that the ship had been scheduled to make one more “nal mission”: to transport
Korean laborers from minato to (presumably) Pusan on the southernmost coast
of the newly liberated (but still Japan-administered) Korean peninsula.
The crewmembers’ protests to this added assignment oers clues toward
understanding the Ukishima-maru’s sad fate in their providing one possible
reason for the ship’s detour into Maizuru Harbor. Kim Ch’angjŏng’s interviews
with surviving crewmembers suggest that they had limited knowledge as to why
the Koreans were in minato, much less why they must repatriate them.20 They
were also concerned over the reception they would receive should they enter
Korean territory: Would the Koreans seek retribution after the ship entered their
homeland waters? One crewmember, First Class ocer Kokufuji Gen, recalls his
mistaken fear that the quickly advancing Soviet military would occupy the entire
peninsula. Would the occupiers seize the ship, arrest the Japanese, and send them
to Siberia for forced labor?
How stupid! … The war was over so why did we have to go to Korea? The Soviets
had entered the war and their military was going to occupy the peninsula. If
we went there for sure they would have captured us. There were many reasons
given but truth be told we felt that we had endured the war and survived.
Why go out to sea again? We simply wanted to be deactivated and allowed to
return home.21

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 87
The crewmembers laced their objections with threats of mutiny if forced to board
the ship. While three did manage to escape prior to departure, they did so with
the threat, if caught, of capital punishment hanging over their heads.22 Perhaps
the anger expressed by crewmembers succeeded in their forging a compromise
in the ship’s destination—to a Japanese port in Honshu rather than to Pusan.
A second fear may have stemmed from a genuine concern over the safety of
the ship and for their personal safety during the voyage that would hug Japan’s
coasts. This course apparently was necessary because all sea charts had been
destroyed, thus making it dicult for the ocers to navigate the ship across the
high seas.23 However, by hugging the coast the Ukishima-maru risked contacting
one of the 55,347 sea mines that U.S. B-29 bombers had littered along the Japanese
coasts to prevent Japanese military ships from going out to sea.24 It is dicult to
imagine that minesweeping operations, entrusted to the Japanese, had advanced
enough to ensure safe passage just one week after Japan had made the decision to
surrender. Even the emperor’s sudden announcement had not halted all military
activity along these coasts where kamikaze pilots reportedly continued their
attacks on Allied ships.25
Reports on the Ukishima-maru incident suggest the possibility that
crewmembers had prior knowledge of the ship’s unfortunate destiny. Other points
support arguments that the ship never intended to sail to Korea. The limited
fuel and supplies that the Ukishima-maru carried—enough for a one-way trip
to Pusan or a round trip to a Japanese port such as Maizuru—suggests that the
ship would make a call at a Japanese port either to replenish supplies (perhaps
before advancing to Pusan), or as a terminal stop. If the latter, it would be fair to
question what the Japanese intended to do with the Koreans had the ship arrived
in Maizuru without incident.
The most frequently used assumption to justify this detour into Maizuru
centers on the Navigation Prohibition directive that General Douglas MacArthur
issued to the Japanese government from the Philippines on August 20, 1945,
two days prior to the Ukishima-maru’s departure. In this Prohibition, the future
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) included ve provisions that
the Japanese needed to complete by 18:00 on August 24, one of which was that
all Japanese ships were to have immediately removed any explosives they might
be carrying to be stored safely on shore. The directive further ordered ships over
100 tons to
report their positions in plain language immediately to the nearest United
States, British, or Soviet radio station. They will proceed to the nearest Allied
port or such port as the Commander in Chief, United States Pacic Fleet, may
direct and will await further orders.26

88 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
The directive did not elaborate on what directions the Allied navies might have
issued had the Ukishima-maru complied with this directive by reporting its position
and reason for the voyage. There is also no indication that the Ukishima-maru
ever contacted an Allied radio station as the Prohibition ordered. Indeed, a fair
question is whether this directive was ever passed on to the Ukishima-maru or to
any other Japanese ship. Instead the Japanese government issued the “Directive of
the Open Seas [taikairei] No. 52” which simply declared it “illegal” for such ships
to be out of port after 18:00 on August 24 while omitting the direction for ships to
contact an Allied radio station.27
Whether the Navigation Prohibition (or more probably the Japanese directive)
caused the Ukishima-maru to detour into Maizuru Harbor is contingent on the
timing in which it reached the ship’s ocers. Had the orders arrived prior to
departure, the ship’s captain could have easily concluded it to be impossible to
complete the journey to Pusan before the imposed curfew. If so, a logical follow-up
question is why the ship departed even though it could not reach its stated desti-
nation. Only if the order had arrived en route does the decision to detour into
Maizuru Harbor make sense. Here, however, interview data is inconclusive.
Onadera Kazuichi, who served as the ship’s communications ocer, contends
that the directive did not arrive until the morning of August 24, just as the ship
passed the Noto peninsula.28 Yet others, including crewmembers interviewed for
the documentary Han no Umi (Sea of distress), claim this to be untrue: ocers
were aware of a directive in time to reschedule plans. One account of the ship’s
sinking claims that a telegram with this information reached the ship’s captain
on August 22 at 19:20, just short of three hours before departure.29 This appears
more logical as certainly the Japanese government would have ensured that the
Ukishima-maru ocers received this directive prior to leaving port. Here, too, one
might expect the existence of documentation detailing this rather fundamental
piece of information. However, to this day none has surfaced.
To convince Koreans to board the ship the Japanese would have had to assure
them that the ship’s ultimate destination was a Korean port, such as Pusan. How
successful they were remains an open question as no exact number of Korean
passengers appears available. Estimates vary wildly from a conservative Japanese
government estimate of 3,735 (plus an additional 225 Japanese crewmembers)
to inated estimates ranging from 6,700 to even 10,000 Koreans crowding onto a
ship originally designed to transport 841 people (plus cargo). As for the number of
deceased Japanese ocial records count 524 Koreans and 25 Japanese perishing
from the ship’s sinking. Korean estimates rise as high as 5,000.
30
Part of the reason
for the large discrepancy between ocial (Japanese government) and unocial
(mostly Korean) casualty estimates is that the lower gure calculated only those

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 89
bodies discovered just after the explosion. Ocials did not adjust this gure after
more bodies surfaced at the time the ship was raised in 1950. As we shall see
below, unreliable means for determining the number of people who boarded the
ship and perished after its sinking would later frustrate the eorts of plaintis
attempting to demonstrate their presence on the ship at the time of its departure,
thus providing Japanese courts reason to reject their claims for compensation.31
Intentional Implosion or Accidental Explosion: What Sank
the Ukishima-maru?
The development of the city of Maizuru in Kyoto Prefecture began as a naval base
in 1901. Like minato its importance grew after the Japanese went to war with
Russia in 1904. Inaugurated as a city in 1943, it soon became engulfed in the battles
of the Pacic War. Just prior to the war’s end the United States dropped a rather
large bomb on the city that some contend served as a trial mission for the Enola
Gay crew who days later detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.32 Between
June 30 and August 8, 1945 the U.S. military planted hundreds of sea mines into
Maizuru Harbor to prevent Japanese war ships from exiting. Soon after the war
the U.S. entrusted the Japanese navy with the responsibility of clearing the sea
of these mines.33
Regardless of whether the ship’s intended destination was Pusan or a Japanese
port such as Maizuru, the cause of the explosion that sank the Ukishima-maru
remains at the center of this controversy. The ship’s detour into a Japanese port
would not be an issue if not for the tragic loss of life. Resolving the mysteries
surrounding the sinking of the Ukishima-maru thus lies in ascertaining the cause
of the explosion. Here, too, unresolved questions have frustrated investigations.
Had Maizuru Harbor been cleared of sea mines beforehand? Did actions by
the Japanese crew, some reportedly seen escaping by lifeboats just before the
explosion, signal that it had been the Japanese navy that planned the implosion?
Do reports by passengers and witnesses of multiple detonations and of the lack of
a water column rising from the sea support the conclusion that an internal, and
thus intentional, implosion sank the ship? What clues might the sunken vessel
have revealed had it been properly examined prior to its reduction to scrap iron
in 1954?
The importance of the naval base would suggest its high priority in completing
minesweeping operations to allow Japanese ships to safely comply with the
August 24 curfew imposed by the Navigation Prohibition. Had the Japanese navy
ordered the detour of ships such as the Ukishima-maru into Maizuru one could
assume that minesweeping operations had been completed. Kim Ch’anjŏng’s

90 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
comprehensive study acknowledges that ships did contact sea mines in Maizuru
prior to the Ukishima-maru’s arrival. However, Kim documents at least ten ships
safely entering the port on August 24 with the Navigation Prohibition deadline
causing a sudden increase in sea trac. He thus calculates the chances of the
Ukishima-maru contacting a sea mine upon entering the harbor to have been
“slim at best.” It would have been an extraordinary stroke of bad luck had it
done so despite following the same sea route as other ships that entered without
incident.34 Others disagree. Crewmember Umegaki Seiji explains that the ships
that passed through safely were smaller than the Ukishima-maru thus aording
them easier access into the harbor.35 The possibility of a mine drifting into the
ship’s path also cannot be overruled. One report concluded that the harbor had
not been declared completely safe until 1952, seven years after the accident.36
Whether the Ukishima-maru was sunk by a single or multiple detonations
is another disputed point that also holds possible clues towards understanding
the ship’s fate. A single detonation gives plausibility to both theories—external
explosion or internal implosion; multiple detonations favor slightly the latter
over the former. Yet another possibility is a combination of both an external and
internal detonation—both a sea mine and explosives within the ship’s hull causing
the ship to sink. This assumes that the ship originally carried explosives and that
they had not been removed as ordered. A recently discovered Japanese Ministry
of Defense document supports this: there is no indication that the ship’s crew
had complied with this order as witnesses did not recall seeing crewmembers
dispose of any.
37
Similar to other evidence cited to support the internal implosion
theory this conclusion must be considered with caution unless it can be better
substantiated. Like the multiple explosion theory,38 this information teases, but
falls short of, the formation of a sustainable conclusion. Because no one recalls
seeing crewmembers removing the explosives does not prove that they were
there in the rst place.
Other questionable events surround the incident. Several reports highlight
suspicious actions by crewmembers that suggest their having prior knowledge
of Japanese intentions to implode the ship. One survivor, Chung Jon sik, reported
overhearing suspicious comments and witnessing Japanese eeing from the
ship prior to the ship’s explosion. From this he concluded that the Japanese had
triggered an explosion for the purpose of killing Korean laborers. His testimony,
which appeared in a September 24, 1945 G-2 U.S. Periodic Report exactly one
month after the incident, read as follows:
On 22 August 1945, some 6700 Korean laborers and factory workers and their
families of the OMINATO Naval Yards were told that they would be returned
to KOREA. They departed aboard the UKIJIMA with a crew of Japanese sailors

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 91
and ocers. The warship arrived and anchored outside the harbor of MAIZURU
(KYUSHU) JAPAN. After dumping the cargo overboard, the workers and their
families were ordered to go to their compartments where they were beaten
with swords and bamboo spears. The Japanese crew then debarked in small
boats. Immediately after they left, a terric explosion on the UKIJIMA caused it
to sink, causing heavy casualties. The informant believes that this was planned
because of the sailors’ remarks, “We feel sorry for the children.”39
That Chung’s recollections erroneously placed Maizuru in Kyushu, strongly
suggests passenger belief that the ship was heading for Pusan. His concluding that
the Japanese intentionally imploded the ship on the basis of a simple statement,
one devoid of context, is weak but strengthened by other rumors that the ship
would be “sunk if it reached Niigata.”40
Another Korean remembers hearing Japanese sailors yell “kill the bastards”
(yatsu wo korose) as bodies ew into the water. This witness was a Mr. Paek
who served as a Korean member of the Japanese military police (kenpeitai)
under the adopted Japanese name of Minami. Koreans in his position were often
given the task of watching over Korean labor due to their prociency in the
Korean language and their knowledge of Korean customs and mannerisms. His
“implosion eyewitness explanation” that appeared in the May 24, 1965 edition
of the Chosŏn sinbo reported that Paek warned fellow passengers that the “ship
is going to sink. The Japanese intentionally imploded it to kill us all,” as he dove
from the ship’s deck.41 Yet, his story, rather than told rst hand in Paek’s words,
was relayed by others, one being Kim Tonggyŏng whose elder brother had become
close to the military policeman after surviving the sinking. Paek also claimed
that the sinking was intentional because the explosion’s failure to cause a water
column rising about 10 meters from the sea in a way that he had seen other sea
mines explode.42 It is not clear what happened to Paek, but he was not around
to testify at court hearings later in the century. Nor could his widow be found
to oer what she might have learned from him regarding the incident.43 While
intriguing, decontextualized statements based on hearsay fall short of providing
the convincing “smoking gun” that a Japanese court would require to render a
verdict in the Koreans’ favor. Also missing from this and other accounts is expla-
nation for the loss of 25 Japanese lives. On the other hand, the Japanese failure to
provide convincing answers to the charges and its reluctance to cooperate more
positively in the investigations renders this circumstantial evidence as “fact” in
the minds of intentional implosion conspiracy proponents.

92 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
Investigating Disaster: Efforts to Resolve the Case of the
Ukishima-maru
Since the time of the incident several formal investigations have been organized
to ascertain the cause of the Ukishima-maru’s sinking. None, however, have
rendered conclusive evidence to quell primarily Korean suspicions of intentional
implosion. The Japanese have been able to deect these accusations by insisting
that the accusers assume the burden of proof, while they maintain control over
any available evidence needed to resolve the mysteries surrounding the incident.
As mentioned above, evidence, both material and human, required by the victims
to argue their case has not surfaced. As for documentary evidence, is it possible
that important information regarding the Korean laborers had existed at one time,
only to be destroyed along with other sensitive documents by Japanese ocials
at the naval base soon after surrender?
The initial report on the sinking appeared in the Korean language Pusan ilbo on
September 18, 1945, just under one month after the incident. This was followed by
other newspaper reportage that appeared in the Japanese language Keijō (Seoul)
nippo on September 26, and the Kyoto shinbun on October 8, of that year. The
rst ocial account was the short September 24, 1945 G-2 Periodic Report quoted
above. Kim Ch’anjŏng ponders why, given the magnitude of this event, the media
did not give it attention immediately after the ship sank. This apparent secrecy is
also curiously found in Miyaaki Sango’s diary quoted earlier. Here the naval base
employee penned detailed entries on Allied bombings of the city. However, he made
no mention of the Ukishima-maru explosion in his entry on this or subsequent
days, at least in his diary’s published version.
44
Kim Ch’anjǒng suggests censorship
as responsible for news of the sinking being contained to the immediate Maizuru
area in the days following the incident.45 However, we can imagine that Korean
survivors spread news of the ship’s sinking to Korean communities within Japan.
To what extent did Japan-based Koreans privy to this news (either rst or second
hand) delay or even cancel their plans to repatriate to Korea?46
The U.S. Occupation government conducted the rst formal investigation into
the incident that produced a preliminary two-page summary dated December 12,
1945, and a nal report in July of the following year. The initial report conrmed
that protests had arisen among crewmembers who objected to being made to
“sacrice their lives for the sake of Korean (sic) especially at this time, to-day after
the termination of the war.” Their superiors answered these protests with threat:
“you must comply with this duty with an idea of death.” The report, obviously
compiled by a non-native speaker of English (perhaps a Korean), continued as
follows:

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 93
After departed Aomori Bay, in the strait between Sadoga-shima [Sado island],
they have dumped out all life-buoys and other articles which were usually
equipped in the ship. The voyage continued, henceforth, and deviated her
course to Maizuru Bay at the point o east Maizuru, Kyoto prefecture, and
entered the port. Just before entering the port, the ship stopped a little while
and signaled by hand ag-signal and entered the harbour slowly.
An explosion of “great sound” took place “about 150 meters from the shore” at
around 1610 (sic) on August 24. The Koreans rescued from the sea were “conned
in a boarding house [and] not allowed to go out, even one step, to meet with
personnels (sic) who came to know whether their Kin were rescued or not …”47
The le for this investigation also includes reports of interviews with witnesses
that were conducted in Japanese and translated into English. These reports
yielded little in the way of new information save for recollections by “Rikisan”
who reported that the explosion occurred just as a small motorboat emerged and
the ship sailed past a red ag.48
In the end the U.S. team deemed the evidence insucient to carry the inves-
tigation further. A handwritten memo penned one month later termed the
evidence “weak and appear[ing] to be based on conjecture” and recommended
that no further action be taken.
49
The U.S. Occupation Forces, having arrived
just days following the explosion, faced a more daunting challenge to solidify its
presence on the archipelago. No doubt they were thus not in a position to devote
sucient time to thoroughly investigate the fate of the Ukishima-maru despite the
large number of deaths that the incident claimed. Of greater urgency were the
more pressing demands of pacifying and disarming militant Japanese, locating
and arresting suspected war criminals, and feeding and housing starving and
homeless Japanese under their supervision.
Japanese-based Korean organizations also pressured the Japanese government
to provide the information needed to bring closure to the incident. One of the
earliest such appeals demanded explanation of cause during negotiations with
the Japanese government for victim compensation. The Japanese apparently
conducted interviews in advance with members of the ship’s crew, including
the captain Torikai Kingo, in preparation for the meetings with the Koreans.
Unfortunately none of the records for these investigations appear to have been
made public. These discussions, which most likely took place in Tokyo, broke o in
mid-October 1945 when the Koreans aggressively challenged the Japanese govern-
ment’s insistence that the explosion was accidental, and insisted that the Japanese
admit its cause as an intentional implosion intended to kill Koreans.50 As noted
above Koreans would nally gain a favorable court verdict in August 2001, only
to see the initial positive decision disappear by the Osaka Court of Appeals based

94 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
on the previous decision being driven by impression rather than by hard scientic
fact.51 In 2004, the Ukishima-maru incident became one of topics addressed by
Truth and Reconciliation committees established by President Roh Moo Hyun
(2003–2008). These investigations, which ended soon after Roh’s term in oce,
managed to complete one report on this incident and the recent court cases.52
Soon after the ship’s sinking the Japanese government did oer the families
of victims established compensation packages totaling up to a paltry 1,550 yen
(remains recovery costs [270 yen], funeral costs [80 yen], and general family
support [1,200 yen]) to the families of deceased. Practical restraints limited the
provision of this compensation to only those families residing in Japan. At the
time there existed no means for transferring monetary funds between Korea and
Japan. Japan ceased accepting claims from 1965 when the Treaty of Basic Relations
between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) after the two sides agreed to a
victimization fund of $364 million allegedly to compensate Koreans victimized over
the three-plus decades of Japanese colonial occupation.
53
According to one Korean
scholar, in 1974–1975 the Korean government oered to pay compensation to up to
8,000 people, perhaps with this fund in mind. However, like other similar overtures
in the spirit of closure victims rejected this gesture as it came from a Korean, rather
than a Japanese, government. Also, the 30,000 Korean ₩ gure—the “value of the
head of a dog”—, must have been insulting to the potential recipients.54
Part of the problem in advancing eorts to conduct a fair and comprehensive
investigation has been the diculty to access information and evidence that
potentially could untangle the mysteries surrounding the sinking. The earliest
investigations, for example, were conducted with the primary piece of evidence—
the ship itself—still submerged in Maizuru Harbor. As emphasized throughout this
paper, not having available reliable documentary evidence such as a passenger
list and the ship’s travel log prevents investigators from understanding even the
most fundamental facts of the case. The 65 plaintis denied compensation by the
Kyoto District Court were surely victimized by the non-existence of a passenger
list.
55
Finally, peculiar behavior by those in possession of potentially valuable
testimony further suggests witness tampering to cover up facts. One example was
the inability to gain the testimony of ex-kenpeitai Paek’s widow, as noted above.56
Social Education as a Conduit for “Victimhood
Nationalism”
Following Japan’s surrender, and throughout the period of occupation, the United
States occupied minato and moved into the naval base. In 1959 the city merged
with other municipalities to form the new city of Mutsu where the Japan Maritime

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 95
Self Defense Forces continue to be housed. Maizuru has also been used as one of
Japan’s primary naval bases since the country regained its sovereignty in 1952.
The city keeps alive in museums and monuments its postwar role as a gateway
for repatriates from the empire, many of whom endured harsh labor conditions
in Siberia from the time of Japan’s surrender to the early 1950s.57 Also present
in Maizuru, but rather inconspicuously located, is a memorial (tsuitō) dedicated
to the tragedy’s Korean victims. The location of the memorial is less enthusiasti-
cally publicized, and not as conveniently accessible, as the city’s other historic
sites.58 This is partly due to its location being situated in close proximity to the
ship’s sinking. This inconvenient location and relatively limited exposure is unfor-
tunate considering the valiant eorts made by many Maizuru residents to assist
Koreans at the time of the sinking, as well as to support the construction of the
monument. The monument comes alive in August when concerned peoples gather
to commemorate the lives lost on that fateful late summer evening in 1945.
The chances of resolving the outstanding issues surrounding the fate of the
Ukishima-maru have grown dimmer with each passing year as memories of the
immediate rst-generation passengers and witnesses fade and their lives pass. It
is thus left to their descendants and other vehicles to protect the memory of the
tragedy. Does this work in Japan’s favor? Perhaps. The Japanese people are not
exceptional in their attempts to purge less attractive elements from historical
memory. Building national identities on a foundation of pride nds accusations
of state-promoted acts of indiscriminate genocide, mass rape, and slave labor
mobilization disturbing.59 Such accusations by Japan’s prewar and wartime
colonized peoples tarnish the postwar image that Japanese have promoted
of their country as a nation of peace. Might the less-than cooperative attitude
displayed by the Japanese government in inquiries and investigations regarding
the Ukishima-maru stem from the fear that the accusations might be true? What
if the incident had been triggered by either an intentional act by the Japanese, or
even by careless oversight?
At least over the short term it appears that Japan has gained the upper hand by
simply deecting accusations by those seeking deeper investigation to ascertain
the truth. While the ship’s sinking may garner occasional mention, most often in
August as concerned people gather in Maizuru or at Tokyo’s Yūtenji where the
ashes of some of the victims are kept, for most Japanese and Koreans the incident
remains forgotten.
60
It has not gained anywhere near the attention that other
colonial assimilation or wartime mobilization policies have. However, as Ann
Stoler notes, “imperial ruins [assume] durable forms in which they bear on the
material environment and on people’s minds.”61 The physical remains of the ship
and documents on the voyage may no longer exist, but its place in the collective

96 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
memory of Japanese rule, though perhaps dim, lingers alongside other allegations
of Japanese atrocities of this period. As with other aspects of victimization where
critical particulars remain in question, Koreans rely on the known to assume the
unknown, which over time becomes accepted as “truth.”
The “truth” becomes engraved as historical “fact” that make its way into
classroom textbooks, but also into other formal social education institutions,
such as museums and monuments, as well as in popular culture—cinema and
documentary lm, print culture, and the Internet. The North Korean lm Souls
Protest oers one telling example in its depiction of the Ukishima-maru sinking,
hoping to leave with viewers a simple impression: The Japanese intentionally
imploded the ship for the purpose of massacring Korean laborers. It explained
the ship’s “sudden” detour into Maizuru as a ruse planned by the Japanese navy
with MacArthur’s Navigation Prohibition serving as a convenient excuse for not
returning the Koreans directly to Pusan. The lm attained screen exposure at
several international lm festivals, and in 2001 it was shown in Seoul. Grace M.
Cho credits this international attention with bringing “the 1945 sinking of the
Ukishima-maru back to memory.”62 Its production crew apparently did extensive
research as much of the lm reects the veriable facts of the incident. One
viewer, a Lee Chul-woo [Yi Ch’ŏl’u], identied as a survivor of the ship’s sinking,
attested to its accuracy, save for the lm’s frequent accolades to Kim Il Sung.63
It is, however, necessary to separate the credibility that Lee oered into that
which he was capable of delivering, and that in which he was not. As a Korean
laborer he was no doubt in a position to verify the horric labor conditions that
the Koreans endured, the jubilation that Koreans felt at the time of their liberation,
and the former laborers’ descent to the ship prior to departure, along with the
trip to Maizuru. It is also most probable that he would be able to comment on the
lm’s depiction of the explosion and its aftermath. Other parts of the lm he would
be hard-pressed to verify such as the discussions limited to Japanese that the lm
inserts to “prove” Japanese culpability, their having imploded the Ukishima-maru
and, the reasoning behind their intention of committing this hideous crime. These
parts of the lm are thus products of the lm crew’s imagination. To complete the
narrative of Korean victimization the lm draws on past Japanese victimization
of Koreans—here portrayed in the form of laborer ashbacks—to encourage the
audience to connect the dots—to conclude the unveriable as probable, if not
outright fact. This requires the lm inventing text, or in Oliver Stone’s words,
“put[ing] dialogue into a real person’s mouth.”64
The lm develops an argument that accuses the Japanese of intentionally
sinking the ship by inserting “character evidence” to portray the Japanese as a
people harboring a low value of human life, both that of Koreans and Japanese.

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 97
One of the lm’s opening scenes has Komura, a Japanese ocer, preparing to
commit ritual suicide. Flashbacks show this same Japanese severing the tongue
of a Korean laborer as punishment, crippling a Korean girl for refusing his sexual
advances, and sending another Korean girl to the Philippines as a “comfort
woman.” Toward the lm’s end Komura shoots a Japanese girl in the back as she
runs to inform the Korean passengers of the Japanese plans to blow up the ship.
The lm demonstrates through ashback the inhumane treatment that the Korean
laborers endured that brought about injuries and even death from overwork or
aggressive beatings.
With the war’s end the Japanese decide that only death will silence the Koreans
who possess potentially harmful knowledge, as well as prevent any vengeance
they might seek against their former subjugators. The conclusion, that the laborers
needed to be eliminated, is supported by Korean interpretation of similar episodes
of the colonial period, including the Japanese introducing a policy of assimilation
attempted to complete the colonized people’s “cultural genocide.” A more recent
ROK lm Battleship Island (K. Gunhamdo, 2017. Director, Ryoo Seung-wan) has
contributed to Koreans imagining the Japanese as genocidal by including a
Japanese military plot to murder Korean laborers to hide its crimes against those
brought to labor on Hashima, an island o the coast of Nagasaki that was recently
designated a UNESCO Heritage site.65
Like many theories that surfaced after the Ukishima-maru sinking, the
DPRK lm Souls Protest had to create a “smoking gun” to justify its contention
of Japanese culpability. The Japanese might continue to answer accusations
of criminal activity with silence or with inactivity, while possibly sitting on
documents that potentially could resolve some of the mysteries of the incident,
as indicated throughout this paper.66 While perhaps the most important mystery
of cause may be beyond solution at this point, there are relatively simple actions
that the Japanese could take as gestures of cooperation. These might simply entail
their oering a sincere apology for failing to safely return the laborers to their
homeland and their supporting the repatriation of the remains of Koreans still
entombed in Japanese temples. Its reluctance to extend such assistance to the
resolution of this and other colonial-era issues, while demanding greater cooper-
ation in similar issues of Japanese victimization, such as the DPRK kidnappings
(rachi mondai) that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, appears hypocritical.
Japan’s failure to cooperate to resolve colonial-era dierences such as the
Ukishima-maru sinking may have greater consequences in Koreans forming
a collective memory of Japanese colonial-era history that contribute to what
Jie-Hyun Lin terms a “victimhood nationalism,” the competing national memories
for the position of collective victims in memory wars.”67 As “competing [colonial]

98 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
memories” draw conict between Japanese and Koreans, “competing [political]
memories” divide Koreans by generation, by location either along the Korean
peninsula or between peninsula and archipelago. The unifying factor for these
people is the historic victimization that the peoples faced. Victimization caused
by the Ukishima-maru incident divided Koreans by residence to the extent it
failed to repatriate one population of the ship’s Korean passengers, and quite
possibly caused countless others to reconsider their decision to repatriate.68
This victimhood crosses generations as the memory of “colonial debris” tragedy
is passed on to secondary victims, the descendants of the primary victims and
other Koreans of this generation. Thus, while incidents like the sinking of the
Ukishima-maru helped form geographic divisions among Koreans, their memory
contributes to a developing national narrative that bonds reunifying peoples
seeking common grounds to pave a renewed national identity.
Notes
1. The author would like to thank Mizuno Naoki for sharing his views on this issue during
a trip we took to Maizuru in March 2016 and Satō Toshiya for keeping me informed of
commemorative events regarding the Ukishima-maru incident. I thank Lee Young Mi for
introducing to me valuable Korean-language sources. I am also indebted to Youngtae
Shin and Andre Haag, as well as two anonymous readers for their comments on dierent
versions of this article. Among the vast holdings of the library of the Zainikkanjin rekishi
shiryō kan (在日韓人資料館 History Museum of J-Koreans) are valuable documents and
videos related to the ship’s sinking. It goes without saying that the views and conclusions
remain my own.
2.
The October 2, 1945 G-2 Periodic Reports noted two such tragedies, one the result of a mine
explosion. On November 21 it reported the sinking of the Nikai Masru, a Korean tugboat.
These reports also informed of attacks by pirates, many of them ex-kenpeitai ocers, who
robbed passengers of their valuables and on occasion their lives. A number of other ships
also fell victim to inclement weather. These reports can be found at Institute of Culture
Studies, ed. Mikugun tonggun saryŏngbu G-2 iril chŏngbu yoyak (미국극동군사령부G-2일일
정보요약 Far East Command, U.S. Army G-2 Daily Intelligence Summary) (Seoul: Institute
of Asian Culture Studies, Hallym University, 1999). See also Jeong Ae-Young, “Kwiguk
haenansago rŭl t’onghae bun kangchedongwŏn-kwa kwihwan (귀국해난사고를통해본강
제동원과귀환 Sea Accidents during the Repatriation of Mobilized Koreans) Hanil minjok
munje yŏn’gu 19 (2010): 123–59.
3. Books on the Ukishima-maru incident, include Kim Ch’anjŏng’s Uk’ishima-maru Pusankō
e mukazu (浮島丸は釜山港へ向かず The Ukishima-ho did not turn toward Pusan) (Kyoto:
Kamogawa shuppan, 1996); Saitō Saguchi, ed. Uk’ishimaho P’ukch’m sagŏn chinsang (우키시
마호폭침사건진상 The Truth behind the Ukishima-maru Sinking by Explosion), trans. Mukai
Midori (Seoul: Tonghyŏn munhwasa, 1996; Chŏn Saechin, Maguma (마그마 Magma) (Seoul:
Paeksan, 2007); and Shinada Shigeru, Bakuchin: Rekishi no fuuka to tatakau (爆沈—歴史
の 風 化とた た かう Explosion: Battling Historical Eorescence) (Tokyo: Kōbunken, 2008). A
committee formed by the Republic of Korea-based Truth and Reconciliation Commission
investigating the incident released Ilch’e kangjŏmha kangchedongwon p’ihae chinsang
kyumyŏng wiwŏnhoe, Uk’ishima-ho sakŏn sosong charyojip (우키시마호사건소송자료접

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 99
Documents regarding the Ukishima-maru Incident) (Seoul: Ilche kangjŏmha kangche-
dongwon p’ihae chinsang kyumyŏng wiwŏnhoe, 2007). Documentaries include NNN
Document 94. “Han” no Umi: Sabukaru Ukishima-maru jiken, sono jitsu ha (「 ハ ン 」の 海 —裁
かれる浮島丸事件・その実は Sea of “Regret”: Trying the Reality of the Ukishima-maru), 1994.
Films include Eijian buruu: Ukishima-Maru sakon (エイジアン・ブルー浮島丸 サゴン Asian Blue:
The Ukishima-maru Incident), 1995, Director Horikawa Hiromichi; Souls Protest (K. Sar’a
innŭn ryŏng’hondŭl 살아있는 靈魂들), 2000, Director Kim Chun-song.
4.
Twenty-ve Japanese succumbed at this time as well. They, however, were considered “war
dead,” thus entitling their families to appropriate benets.
5.
Ann Stoler, ed. Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2013). Stoler here seeks to “track the uneven temporal sedimentations in which imperial
formations leave their marks …” that is, “how empire’s ruins contour and carve their the
psychic and material space in which people live and what compound layers of imperial
debris do to them” (Stoler, Imperial Debris, 2).
6. The North Korean lm Souls Protest, for example, displays no sympathy toward the possi-
bility of accidental explosion in arguing intentional implosion.
7. U.S. forces bombed the city on July 14–15, and from August 8–10, 1945. “Aircraft Action
Report No. AG47#119” for the August 10 aerial raid where the operation was listed as its
“mission”: “Attack Targets of Opportunity, Aomori-Ominato Area: Ominato Naval Base
(Aomori) (Honshu) 7500 Ton F.T.A. Ominato Aireld Oil Storage at Ominato.” Japanese
National Diet Library (http://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000006866029-00). The infor-
mation here is included in the Diet library’s listing on this bombing incident.
8. Aoyama admitted that some Koreans did escape en route, Kim, Uk’ishima-ho, 65–66.
9. Chŏn, Magŭma, 231.
10. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 70.
11. Chŏn, Magŭma, 231–32.
12. Chŏn, Magŭma, 229–30.
13. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 69.
14. Shinada, Bakuchin, 39–40; Kim, Ukishima-maru, 71.
15.
John Dower writes that following the August 15 broadcast by the emperor “military ocers
and civilian bureaucrats threw themselves frenetically into the tasks of destroying their
les and disbursing vast hoards of military supplies in illicit ways.” John Dower, Embracing
Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 39.
16. Aoyanagi, Ukishima-maru ha Pusan ni mukete shukkō shita (浮島丸は釜山に向けて出航した
The Ukishima-maru Left Port for Pusan) (Hyūga: Sōtokainokai, 2012), 5.
17. Kim, Ukishima-maru 81.
18.
There are a number of cases of Koreans pressuring Japanese companies in Korea for money.
The October 2, 1945 edition of the G-2 Daily Reports listed two such incidents, involving
Hidachi Iron Works and Tōyō Wire Manufacturing Co. It is not clear by these reports,
though, whether the former employees were seeking funds owed to them personally or
simply taking advantage of the situation. See HQ, USAFIK [United States Armed Forces In
Korea], G-2 Periodic Report (1945.9.9 to 1946. 2.12) (Institute of Culture Studies, ed. Mikugun
tonggun (September 24, 1945), 300.
19. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 59.
20. Kim summarizes the reasons for crewmember objection in his Ukishima-maru, 49–51.
21. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 44. The idea that the Soviet military would arrest the crewmembers
and send them to Siberia is probably a combination of a recorded concern (whether the
Soviet armies would occupy the entire Korean peninsula), and invented memory (how
these Soviet armies would treat captured Japanese military personnel).
22. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 110.
23. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 125.

100 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
24. Ukishima-maru zannansha tsuitō jikkō iinkai, Ukishima-maru jiken no kiroku (浮島丸事件
の記録 A Record of the Ukishima-maru Incident) (Tokyo: Kamogawa shuppan, 1989), 46.
25. “Jap’s again Battle U.S. Photo Planes over Tokyo Area: 1 U.S. Killed,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(August 19, 1945) <https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/52697500/?terms=%22Japs%2
BAgain%2BBattle%2BU.S.%22> (accessed August 26, 2018). Ugaki Matome’s diary ends
with the admiral recruiting pilots to participate on a suicide mission to y eleven Suisei
dive bombers into the ships of “arrogant” Americans stationed in Okinawa. The diary’s
epilogue notes that “there is no record of Ugaki’s suicide squad crashing into any U.S. ship
at Okinawa. Apparently they went down at sea.” Ugaki Matome, Fading Victory: The Diary
of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941–1945, trans. by Masataka Chihaya (Pittsburg, PA: University
of Pittsburg Press, 1991), 663–64.
26. “MacArthur’s Landing Instructions,” as carried in the New York Times (August 23, 1945).
Proquest Historical newspapers: The New York Times with Index (https://www.nytimes.
com/1945/08/23/archives/macarthurs-landing-instructions.html) (accessed September 5,
2018).
27.
Quoted in Kim, Ukishima-maru, 117. Kim includes a picture of the directive as dated simply
August 1945.
28. Aoyanagi, Ukishima-maru ha Pusan ni mukete shukkō shita, 5.
29. Shinada, Bakuchin, 26. This would have made it impossible for the ship to complete the
estimated seventy-hour journey to Pusan in time to meet the curfew.
30. United States G-2 Daily Reports on September 24, 1945 provided the earliest estimate of
6,700 passengers. 70. Other estimates are taken from Grace Cho, Haunting the Korean
Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy and the Forgotten War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2008), 172.
31. In August 2001 the Kyoto District Court awarded 15 out of 80 plaintis three million yen
each for “stress-related hardships” (seishintekikurō). Though stopping short of determining
cause, the court found fault in the Japanese stopping in Maizuru rather than delivering the
Koreans to Pusan. In May 2003 the Osaka High Court overturned this decision, a ruling that
upon appeal was upheld in November 2004 by the Japanese Supreme court. Naitō Hisako,
“Korean Forced Labor in Japan’s Wartime Empire,” in Paul Kratoska, ed. Asian Labor in
Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories (London: Routledge, 2015), 96–97.
32. Maizuru faced aerial bombings between July 29–30, 1945 as reported by Miyaaki Sango,
Maizuru daison kaigun kayakushō: Chōyōkōin nikki 舞鶴第三海軍火薬廠徴用工員日記 [The
Third Naval Gunpowder Ship in Maizuru: The Diary of a Drafted Factory Hand], Self-
published, 1989), 285–286.
33. Kim Ch’anjŏng oers a comprehensive summary of the numbers and types of sea mines
dropped by the U.S. military, as well as the number of Japanese ships that contacted sea
mines after the war’s end in his Ukishima-maru, 175–180.
34. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 181–182.
35.
Kim, Ukishima-maru, 187–188. See also Inaba Kōichi, “Ukishima-maru jiken to Nitcho Kokkō
seijōka (浮島丸事件と日朝国交正常化 The Ukishima-maru Incident and Japan–North Korean
normalization), Kagaku shakaishugi 77 (September 2004): 86.
36. Ukishima-maru zannansha tsuitō jikkō iinkai, Ukishima-maru jiken no kiroku, 51.
37. “Ukishima Maru likely contained Explosives,” Korea JoongAng Daily (on-line, August 10,
2016). http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3022406 (accessed
June 21, 2018).
38.
Kim, Ukishima-maru, 168–169; Ukishima-maru zannansha tsuitō jikkō iinkai, Ukishima-
maru jiken no kiroku, 27.
39.
Institute of Asian Culture Studies, ed. Mikugun tonggun saryŏngbu (September 24, 1945), 70.
40. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 123.
41. Quoted in Kim, Ukishima-maru, 164.

CAPRIO THE UKISHIMA-MARU INCIDENT AND ITS LEGACY 101
42. Kim Ukishima-maru, 165–168.
43. Ilch’e kangjŏmha kangchedongwon p’ihae chinsang kyumyŏng wiwŏnhoe, Uk’ishima-ho
sakŏn sosong charyojip 46.
44. Miyaaki, Maizuru daisan kaigan kayakushō, 300–303.
45. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 16.
46. That the Ukishima-maru sinking contributed to Japan-based (zainichi) Koreans’ decisions
to remain in Japan is a point made in the exhibits of the Zainichi Kanjin shiryōkan (Japan-
based Korean museum) in Tokyo, in Naitō, “Koreans Forced Labor in Japan’s Wartime
Empire,” 97. For a discussion of other areas of danger that might have prevented Korean
post-liberation repatriation see Mark Caprio, “Kiken na kikan: Nihon rettō to Chōsen
Hantō no hazamano nanmin” (危険な帰還—日本レットと朝鮮半島の間の難民 Dangerous
Repatriation: Refugees Sandwiched between the Japanese Archipelago and the Korean
Peninsula). Translated by Kim Junko, in Ishii Masako et al., eds. Kyōseiteki na idō/ryūdō
(Forced Migration and Mobility) Kyoto: Kōyō shobo, 2019. 3–33.
47.
Kotai Sei (?) to Commander of Occupation Troops (untitled), December 12, 1945. GHQ/SCAP
Records (RG331) Investigation Division Reports (No. 130). File available in the National Diet
Library, Tokyo, Japan. The compiler of this report was aliated with the Korean Association
of Japan, Hirosaki oce. The report is dated just one week after an attempt was made to
bring the case to Japanese court.
48. Headquarters of Aomori Korean League in Japan to Commanding General of Occupation
Troops, “Report on Investigation in connection with S.S. Ukishima Maru Incident
(December 22, 1945), GHQ/SCAP Records (RG 331). This report estimated the ship carrying
8,000 passengers.
49. Memo to chief Investigations Division, “Ship Sinking” (January 29, 1945).
50. Kim, Ukishima-maru, 202–203.
51.
Ilch’e kangjŏm hakang chedongwon p’ihae chinsang kyumyŏng ŭinhŭi, Uk’ishimaho, 47–48.
52. Ilch’e kangjŏmha kangchedongwon p’ihae chinsang kyumyŏng wiwŏnhoe, Uk’ishima-ho
sakŏn sosong charyojip.
53.
Aoyanagi Atsuko reviews this compensation plan in her Ukishima-maru ha Pusan ni mukete
shukkō shita, 26. Kim Insung addresses one problem with compensation as a means of
resolving this issue being that many of the victims were without direct descendants.
“Kusulchosa ŭl t’onghae pon Uk’ishimaho sosong ch’amgajadŭr ŭl sakkǒne taehan kiǒkkwa
insik” (구술조사를 통해 본 우키시마호 소송 참가자들의 사건에 대한 기억과 인식 The Plainti’s
Experience and Memory of the Ukishima-maru Incident Suit), Minjok yǒn’gu 65 (March
2016): 103.
54. Kim, “Kusulchosa ŭl t’onghae pon Uk’ishimaho sosong ch’amgajadŭr ŭl sakkǒne taehan
kiǒkkwa insik,” 103; Ilche kangjŏm hakang chedongwon p’ihae chinsang kyumyŏng ŭinhŭi,
Uk’ishimaho, 94. These two publications both call for the South Korean government to
assume greater responsibility in bringing closure to this issue.
55. See Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora, 171. The documentaries Ukishima-maru ha Pusan
e mukawazu” and Han no Umi” both discuss the issue of critical documents not being
provided for the plaintis’ lawyers.
56. Ilch’e kangjŏm hakang chedongwon p’ihae chinsang kyumyŏng ŭinhŭi, Uk’ishimaho, 46.
57.
The Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum (Maizuru hikiage kinenkan) homepage
informs that the city welcomed 346 ships carrying 660,000 overseas Japanese into its port
between 1945–1958. Many ships brought men who had been transported from northern
Korea and Manchuria to Siberia for hard-labor purposes. https://m-hikiage-museum.jp/
english-education/04-repatriation.html (accessed January 3, 2019).
58. The “Maizuru kankō gaidomappu” (舞鶴観光ガイドマップ Maizuru Tourist Guide map) that
the city distributes to tourists notes the position of the memorial on its map but does not
include it among the 29 short descriptions it gives of the city’s top tourist sites.

102 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES, VOLUME 18, NO. 2 (2019)
59. See Laura Hein and Mark Selden, “The Lessons of War, Global Power, and Social Change.”
In Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds. Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan,
Germany and the United States. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000, 3–50.
60. Upon a visit to Yūtenji two years ago a temple representative conrmed to me that the
temple did (reluctantly) accept the remains of the ship’s victims, along with those of other
Korean wartime victims, as no other temple would take them. On August 24, 2018 50 people
gathered at the temple to attend the 30th Wartime Victims Memorial Service (Sensō higaisha
tsuitōshiki) to honor the souls of the 700 Korean wartime dead whose remains are kept
at the temple, down from the 2327 in 1970. “Chōsenjin sensō giseisha tsuitōshiki hiraku:
Yūtenji hondō ni neru Ukishima-maru giseishara” (Wartime Victims Memorial Service Held
for Ukishima-maru Victims and others at Yūtenji), Tōitsu nippō, August 28, 2018) http://
news.onekoreanews.net/detail.php?number=84938&thread=04 (accessed January 13, 2019.
61. Stoler, Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination, 2.
62. Grace M. Cho reports the lm gaining screen time in Moscow, Hong Kong, and even New
York where a North Korean lm festival was held in 2002. Cho, Haunting the Korean
Diaspora, 171, 174.
63. Sang-Hun Choe, “Ship Tragedy Involving Thousands of Koreans, San Francisco Chronicle,
24 August 2001.
64.
“A Conversation between Mark Carnes and Oliver Stone,” in Mark C. Carnes, ed. Past
Imperfect: History According to the Movies (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 311.
65.
The belief that Japanese colonial intention was to eliminate all Koreans was brought to my
attention by a student of Korean ancestry enrolled in a course on Modern Korean History
that I taught at UCLA in 2013. In an email message the student inquired whether I planned
to lecture on the “Korean holocaust” that history classes tend to ignore.
66. Kumagai Taru warns of the “historical risk” (rekishi risuku) that nations accept that past
wartime atrocities will return to haunt the state should they remain unresolved. He argues
that compensating such victimized peoples is more out of concern for future Japanese
generations to ensure that they do not have to carry the guilt of their ancestors. Kumagai
Taru, Nihon to Doitsu: futatsu no sengo (日本とドイツー二つの戦後 Japan and Germany: Two
Postwars) (Tokyo: Shueisha shinsho, 2015), 130–131.
67. Jie-Hyun Lin, “Victimhood Nationalism in Contested Memories: National Mourning and
Global Accountability,” in Memory in a Golden Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories,
edited by Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan,
2010), 139.
68.
Ships sinking, as in the case of the Ukishima-maru, was just one of a number of dangers that
Japan-based Koreans had to consider when contemplating repatriation to the peninsula.
For a review of these dangers see Caprio, “Kiken na kikan: Nihon rettō to Chōsen Hantō
no hazamano nanmin.”
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