P > P's Quotes

“Now let’s say I gave him my address. The young cop would get on the radio and have someone at the station check the resident register. At that point, it would come out that I’m Zainichi Korean. The young cop would be so informed. Then he would ask, “Do you have your alien registration card?” Japan used to have a law called the Alien Registration Law, which oversaw the foreigners living in Japan. Although “oversaw” had a nice ring to it, the law was basically there to put a collar on so-called “bad” foreigners. Despite being born and raised in Japan, I was still considered a foreign resident, so I was required to be registered as one and have an alien registration card. You were supposed to have this card on your person at all times and not having it could get you a year of penal labor or imprisonment or a fine of 200,000 yen. Anyone who took off his collar would get disciplined. Since I wasn’t some farm animal kept by the state, I refused to wear my collar. And I wasn’t about to start now.”
― Kazuki Kaneshiro, Go

“The Japanese government actively promoted the repatriation, supposedly on humanitarian grounds. But in my opinion, what they were actually pursuing was opportunism of the most vile and cynical kind. Look at the facts. During the period of the Japanese Empire, thousands upon thousands of Koreans had been brought to Japan against their will to serve as slave laborers and, later, cannon fodder. Now, the government was afraid that these Koreans and their families, discriminated against and poverty-stricken in the postwar years, might become a source of social unrest. Sending them back to Korea was a solution to a problem. Nothing more.”
― Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea