“General Sutherland, show him where to sign,” snapped General Douglas MacArthur to his Chief of Staff. Who was this fumbling Japanese official in a tail suit and on a wooden leg? He was Mamoru Shigemitsu, the Foreign Minister of Imperial Japan, who, representing the Japanese Government and the Emperor of Japan, came aboard the battleship USS Missouri to sign the instrument of surrender on September 2, 1945. He lost one of his legs to a bomb thrown by a Korean man Yoon Bong-gil in Hongkou Park, Shanghai, 13 years before.

Chousn Ilbo reports the recent discovery of a new photo of Yoon (Feature, 12/06/00, English Chosun). This is the first time I see his photo up-close. The photo is remarkably well preserved, and he was a real handsome young man.

Yoon Bong-gil was the ultimate Patrick Henry, who declared to the British in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death!” When Yoon was arrested on the spot, he raised both of his hands in delight and declared, “Free Korea Forever!” He is also one of the most misunderstood Koreans by the western historians. I write this essay to set the record straight.

Since the early part of 1900, Imperial Japan was expanding its prosperity sphere like cancer. It had taken Korea in 1910, then manufactured all kinds of excuses to start troubles with China. They conquered Manchuria 1n 1931, after charging that they were fired upon by the Chinese.

On the Japanese Emperor’s 31st birthday, April 29, 1932, 100,000 Japanese living in Shanghai area planned a grand celebration in Hongkou Park. Like the icing on the cake, the Japanese 4-star general Yoshinori Shiragawa had just won the Battle of Shanghai. At that time, Korea had its Provisionary Government in Shanghai, which was fighting for the liberation of Korea from Japan under the leadership of Kim Koo. This Korean Government was similar to Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Government in London.

Kim Koo was a simple and single-minded man. He hated the Japanese. In 1895, when Japanese thugs attacked the royal palace and slashed Queen Min of Chosun Dynasty to death with Samurai sword, and burned her body in kerosene fire, Kim vowed to kill as many Japanese invaders as possible.

From Shanghai, he sent several young volunteers to kill Japanese leaders, including the Emperor, in Tokyo and occupied Seoul. Some succeeded and some failed. Of these, Yoon’s case was the most successful one. As the Japanese in Shanghai were preparing for the birthday ceremony, Kim obtained bombs in the forms of a lunch box and a water canteen from his Chinese friends. On the fateful day of April 29, Kim and Yoon had breakfast together.

Yoon suggested to Kim to swap Kim’s watch with his because his watch was more expensive one. Kim obliged. Tearful Kim said to 24 years old Yoon that they would meet again in the earth (a Korean way of saying, “we’ll meet again in heaven”). Yoon, acting like a reporter, passed the Japanese guards without problem. Nearby, Kim was waiting for the big news breathlessly.

A couple of hours later at 11:40 am, the city of Shanghai shook. Yoon threw his bombs at the Japanese dignitaries on the podium. Among others, the fearful Shiragawa received multiple wounds and died a month later; Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura (Commander of the Japanese 3rd Fleet), who served as the Japanese Ambassador to Washington at the time of Pearl Harbor, lost his right eye; and Shigemitsu, who was the Japanese Consul General to China, lost his left leg. Yoon defiantly stood in place, made the above pronouncement, and asked the Japanese police to arrest him. He was tried and executed in Japan at the end of that year. As the Chosun Ilbo article points out, Yoon was born in Chungnam Province, Korea but western historians treat him as a Japanese or Chinese.

The late Gordon H. Prangle, for instance, wrote in his masterful book “At Dawn We Slept” (Penguin Books, New York, 1981, page-6) that a Chinese terrorist was responsible for Ambassador Nomura’s injury. The eminent historian, the late Theodore H. White, who witnessed the surrender signing on the deck of Missouri, wrote in “The Danger from Japan” that Shigemitsu “had been crippled years before by Japanese terrorists who had tried to kill him, considering him a man of peace” (The New York Times Magazine, July 28, 1985, page-19). They were as incorrect as calling Menachem Begin, who bombed King David Hotel in Jerusalem, an Arab terrorist.

As for Kim Koo, he took a refuge in the home of a son of an American minister, the Peachs, in the French Sector of the City. There he wrote a statement claiming the responsibility, Mrs. Peach translated it into English, and sent it to the newspapers. Japanese police placed a big bounty on him, dead or alive.

Soon the Japanese police inevitably suspected Peach’s home as his hideout. One day, as the plain cloth policemen and bounty hunters were closing in on him, he disguised himself like a Caucasian gentleman, Mrs. Peach as his wife, and Mr. Peach as their chauffeur, and escaped to Nanjing. As Nanjing was being threatened, he moved the Provisionary Government to Chungqing.

By then, many young Koreans, who were conscripted to the Japanese military, escaped from their units in Manchuria, and trickled into the Korean Government for a chance to fight for their country. Kim sent them to the US military under General “Vinegar Joe” Joseph W. Stillwell, where they received the OSS training. But Japan surrendered before they had a chance to use their training. By the way, General Stillwell was also on the Missouri watching the Japanese delegation, according to Theodore White, “like a dog at the sight of an enemy.”

Upon returning to Korea in November 1945, one of the first things Kim did was meeting the families of the young people he sent to deaths, including Yoon’s son. Then, he had the bones of Yoon and others moved from Japan, and bury them in Hyochang Park in Seoul. Kim was extremely unhappy about Korea being divided into the North and South after the liberation, for which he devoted his entire life. A disgruntled army lieutenant assassinated Kim in 1949, exactly one year before the eruption of the Korean War. Kim was also buried in Hyochang Park along with his beloved young friends.

Most part of the story in this essay is from Kim’s journal, Baekbum Ilji, which he left for his two sons. There is a Yoon Bong-gil Memorial Hall in Kangnam, Seoul, where we can see the watch Yoon exchanged with Kim’s.