This Kind of War: The Classic Military History of the Korean War

by T.R. Fehrenbach

Fortunately for Jones, the Jap soldiers in Korea waiting to be sent home were willing workers. Both Koreans, drunk with new liberation, and Americans, already mentally wearing civilian clothes, grew sullen at the idea of labor. The Japs, now that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was gone, were affable, smiling, professional, and entirely helpful. Jones put them to work. Somebody had to get the job done. Eventually, though, all the Japs had to be repatriated. They took with them, when they left, every military officer, every professional man, every engineer, bank teller, and executive in the Pusan area. They left behind a hell of a mess. Like most Americans, Colonel Jones was not prepared to take Chosun. The appalling poverty, the dust, dirt, filth, and eternal clamor of Pusan repelled any man accustomed to the West. Orphan children, with running sores, lay in the streets. Society, with the iron Japanese hand gone, was in dissolution. Money was worthless, since the Japanese had printed billions of yen prior to the surrender and passed it out to all who wanted it. Almost all responsible Koreans, particularly the educated were—rightly—tarred with the collaborationist brush.