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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In March and April 1948 Koreans across Japan rose up in protest after the Japanese government began to enforce an order handed down to them by the American Occupation administration to close Korean ethnic schools. One such protest took place in Kobe on April 24 when Koreans stormed the Hyogo Prefecture offices in an attempt to get the governor to rescind the order to close the four Korean ethnic schools in the prefecture. American and Japanese administrations reacted harshly to the Korean actions. Police arrested thousands of Koreans and inflicted stiff penalties on the incident's leaders. As was often the case, the Occupation administration misinterpreted Korean intention to keep the schools open as a leftist attempt to disrupt U.S. occupations in Korea and Japan. Here the incident is examined through the eyes of one Occupation employee, Elizabeth Ryan, a 31-year old court reporter who included detailed information on the incident and its participants in personal letters that she sent to her family in the United States.
[1] Unless specified otherwise, information on the riots is taken from “United States of America vs. Kim Dai Sam [T'aesam] et al: Review of the Staff Judge Advocate,” Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949, reel 3 (Tokyo: Japanese Diet Library, microfilm).
[2] Pak Kyonsik, KaihÅ▯-go zainichi ChÅ▯senjin undÅ▯shi [The history of post-liberation Japan-based Korean demonstrations] (Tokyo: San'ichi shoten, 1989), 195.
[3] “Sentences Imposed as Results of Kobe-Osaka Riots in April 1948,” Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949, reel 3 (Tokyo: Japanese Diet Library, microfilm).
[4] Changsoo Lee, “Koreans Under SVAP: An Era of Unrest and Repression,” in Koreans in Japan: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation, edited by Lee and De Vos (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 81.
[5] These letters, which totaled over 1000 pages, were recently discovered in a used bookstore in Nebraska. Japan Times staff writer Reiji Yoshida has written a series of articles on them. I am indebted to him for sharing with me the letters involving the Kobe riots along with other documents that he collected involving the incident. His articles can be found at
[6] This was probably due to her and “the boys” being restricted to camp, as she reported in her April 27, 1948 letter.
[7] Yi W&Wcedil;‘lsun, “Zainichi ChÅ▯senjin no minzoku kyÅ▯iku to zainichi ChÅ▯senjin kyÅ▯iku” (Japan-based Korean ethnic education and Japan-based Korean education) in Pak ChongmyÇ‘ng, Zainichi ChÅ▯senjin no rekishi to bunka (Japan-based Korean history and culture) (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2006), 221.
[8] “The Constitution of Japan,” Japan Institute of Congressional Law, at
[9] Hiromitsu Inokuchi, “Korean Ethnic Schools in Occupied Japan, 1945-52,” in Koreans in Japan: Critical voices from the Margin, edited by Sonia Ryang (London: Routledge/Curzon, 200), 150.
[10] Both orders were originated by SCAP. Takemae Eiji, GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and its Legacy, trans. Robert Ricketts and Sebastian Swann (New York: Continuum, 2001), 462.
[11] Ibid., 450.
[12] In another undated letter Ryan writes that the massive “Korean hunt” was a demonstration to the Russians (who were suspected as “behind all this unrest”) to make them, as she put it, “stay out of our play pen here.”
[13] For example, Hugh Byas, Government By Assassination (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1942), 359-360.
[14] Office of Strategic Services, “Aliens in Japan” (June 29, 1945), “Occupation of Japan” United States Planning Documents, 1942-1945, Volume III of set located in the Japanese National Library, pp. 2, 15.
[15] Letter from Douglass Jenkins to U.S. Political Adviser William Sebald (May 4, 1948). Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949, reel 15 (Tokyo: Japanese Diet Library, microfilm).
[16] See William Underwood, “New Era for Japan-Korea History Issues: Forced Labor Redress Efforts Begin to Bear Fruit,” Japan Focus.
[17] H. Merrell Benninghoff, “The Political Adviser in Korea (Benninghoff) to the Secretary of State,” Foreign Relations of the United States VI (September 15, 1945), 1051. This attitude may have been influenced by communications sent by the Japanese to Okinawa, where the occupying army prepared for its new assignment prior to arrival. See Kobayashi Tomoko, “GHQ no zainichi ChÅ▯senjin ninshiki ni kan suru ikkÅ▯satu” (One consideration of GHQ's perception of Koreans), ChÅ▯senshi kenkyÅ«kai ronbunshÅ« 32 (October 1994), 165-192. for a summary of U.S. suspicions of communist influence in southern Korea. Bruce Cumings found little evidence to support the often-heard contention that Soviet or North Korean sources were supplying southern guerrillas. Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 245. He writes that although from around the time of Syngman Rhee's 1948 election southern communists began receiving guidance from North Korean communists, it “cannot be said [they] were mere creatures of Kim Il Sung” (ibid., 218).
[18] For discussion on the smuggling operations see Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “An Act Prejudicial to the Occupation Forces: Migration Controls and Korean Residents in Post-Surrender Japan,” Japan Studies 24, no. 1 (May 2004): 5-28.
[19] “Letter from Jenkins to Sebald,” May 4, 1948. In Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Japan, 1945-1949 (Microfilm, Reel 15, Japan Diet Library). For similar views see “General Dean's Answer to Written Press Questions of May 6, 1948,” in ibid.
[20] G-2 Periodic Reports (April 28, 1948).
[21] Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun, pp. 220-221.
[22] CIC Reports carried statistics that suggested these acts to have been more balanced than the information included in G-II reports, which did not list right-wing acts against left-wing groups. In its May 16 report it recorded 162 deaths of which 43 were members of left-wing groups, and 59 members of right-wing groups. Counter Intelligence Corps Semi-Monthly Report (May 16, 1948), CIC Pogoso (1945.9 – 1949.1) 3 (Seoul: Hallym University, 1995), 406-407, 424.
[23] Kim Kut'ae, MigunchÇ'ng Ç“i Hanguk t'ongch'i (U.S. military administration's rule in Korea) (Seoul: PagyÇ'ngsa, 1992), 151-152. The Peace Preservation Act acted as a model for South Korea's National Security Law that is most frequently applied to anyone who demonstrates sympathy to communism or to North Korea.
[24] Counter Intelligence Corps Semi-Monthly Report (April 23-30, 1948), 15.
[25] Lee, “Koreans Under SCAP, p. 82.
[26] Changsoo Lee, “The Legal Status of Koreans in Japan,” in Lee and De Vos, eds., Koreans in Japan, p.138.
[27] Richard H. Mitchell quotes Ministry of Justice figures to estimate that in 1950 just under half (49.9 percent) of Japan-based Koreans were second generation in his The Korean Minority in Japan (Berkeley: University of California, 1967), 159.
[28] Lee, “The Legal Status of Koreans in Japan,” p. 138. This was in part a decision based on practicalities. Had SCAP granted Koreans the special status they demanded, they would have been eligible for special food rations and other privileges afforded peoples of United Nations states. The sheer size of the Japan-based Korean population made this option rather impractical. See Mark E. Caprio, “Resident Aliens: Forging the Political Status of Koreans in Occupied Japan.” In Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita, eds. Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2007), 178-199.
[29] As I describe in “Resident Aliens,” more entrepreneurial returnees were able to circumvent this restriction by exchanging money en route to Korea with Japanese returning to Japan. As we shall see below, even SCAP officials recognized this restriction as a formidable barrier to Korean repatriation.
[30] Bruce Cumings offers a more complete description of this violence. See his two-volume Origins of the Korean War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 1990). I reflect on the effect that this violence had on Japan-based Koreans in “Resident Aliens.
[31] Truman delivered this speech before Congress to request $100 million in aid for Greece and Turkey. Quoted in Warren I. Cohen, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol. IV: America in the Age of Soviet Power, 1945-1999 (Cambridge: UK, Cambridge University Press, 1995), 38-39.
[32] George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1967), Chapter 16. For a summary of this “reverse course” see Mark E. Caprio and Yoneyuki Sugita, “Introduction: The U.S. Occupation of Japan—Innovation, Continuity, and Compromise,” in Caprio and Sugita, eds., Democracy in Occupied Japan: The U.S. Occupation and Japanese Politics and Society, pp.12-17.
[33] “Shiritsu de ninka shinsei: ChÅ▯sen gakkÅ▯ mondai wa kaiketsu” (Korean school problem is solved: They will apply for authorization as private schools), Asahi shinbun (May 5, 1948). Schools in Tokyo remained open but were absorbed by the Japanese schools system that supplied the schools with Japanese staff and teachers. (Inokuchi, “Korean ethnic schools,” p. 154.
[34] See Inokuchi, “Korean ethnic schools,” p. 153-155.
[35] See Eriko Aoki, “Korean Children, Textbooks, and Educational Practices in Japanese Primary Schools,” in Ryang, Koreans in Japan, p. 157.
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