1946: Hong Sa-ik, a Korean general in the Japanese army
1 comment September 26th, 2017 Headsman
Hong Sa-ik, an ethnic Korean officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, was hanged in Manila on this date in 1946 for war crimes against captured prisoners in the Philippines.
Korea surrendered her diplomatic sovereignty to Japan in 1905 when our man Hong was just 16; five years later, Japan annexed Korea outright. These were events that would move many years of violent hostility on the peninsula and shape the progress of Hong’s life and death.
However many and well-remembered are martyrs in resistance, there are always many who would sooner go along with events. Hong was in this agreeable latter camp; when Japan shuttered the Korean military academy he was attending, he simply transferred to the Japanese one. When Japan took over his homeland, he declined his Korean classmates’ entreaties to put his combat training at the service of an underground resistance.
Instead, Hong rose through Japan’s ranks to the position (late in World War II) of lieutenant general and supervisor of all the POW camps in the Philippines — whose conduct rated a sore Allied grievance as the war came to a close.
Hong was prosecuted by the United States as a Class B war criminal, and was the highest-ranking Korean officer to be executed for war crimes in the postwar period.
On this day..
- 2014: A Barawe bigamist - 2020
- 1939: Javier Bueno, Asturian socialist newsman - 2019
- 1879: Anthony Blair - 2018
- 1568: Leonor de Cisneros, chastised wife - 2016
- 1965: Kenneth Roraback and Rocky Versace, Vietnam War POWs - 2015
- 1904: Newly caught Herero prisoners-of-war - 2014
- 1803: Joseph Samuel survives three hangings - 2013
- 2003: Vignes Mourthi, framed in Singapore? - 2012
- 1778: James "Sandy Flash" Fitzpatrick - 2011
- 1913: Joe Richardson lynched - 2010
- 1764: Lt. Vasily Mirovich, for attempting to topple Catherine the Great - 2009
- 1396: Thousands of knights of the Last Crusade - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,Execution,Hanged,History,Japan,Korea,Occupation and Colonialism,Philippines,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Soldiers,U.S. Military,USA,War Crimes
Tags: 1940s, 1946, hong sa-ik, manila, september 26, world war ii
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