Insignia & Badges for Requisitioned Workers in War-Critical Industries
Insignia & Badges for Requisitioned Workers in War-Critical Industries
The upcoming Wasabi vs Kimchi dispute of August 2020
Toward this coming August, diplomatic tension will continue to mount between Japan and Korea, because the Korean court is threatening to start selling off Japanese possessions in Korea as of midnight of 4th August.
They had confiscated assets of Japanese companies located in Korea, who had made use of requisitioned Korean labor during WW2. Japan and Korea had actually signed an agreement in 1965 that was supposed to irreversibly settle such WW2 grievances between the two countries in which Japan paid Korea huge amounts in settlement/aid. But the money won from Japan never reached individuals within Korea who claim to have been forcibly exploited by the Japanese and the Korean courts and government take the stance that such individual claims are still valid against Japanese companies, as in their interpretation, personal damage claims take precedence over any treaty agreement made between the two countries.
Japan is refusing to budge on this point, as it regards the matter already settled for good in 1965 and whatever settlement sought by Korean individuals at this point is now a matter to be settled internally within Korea between the individual and the Korean government, who had received compensation money from Japan back in 1965.
In August, the court in Korea will proceed to liquidate assets confiscated from the Japanese companies to pay off the Korean claimants as settlement. If it comes to such action, Japan is expected to retaliate with harsh measures that can cripple the already fragile Korean economy.
Whichever side of the fence you stand on this matter, it is a good occasion to review Japan’s wartime policy and actions to mobilize its civilian population as workforce necessary to sustain the war effort. It also allows us to introduce a labor related insignia of Japan, which, in the context above, the Koreans like to treat as a symbol of tyranny comparable to the “Jewish” star forced upon the Jews by the Nazis.
See here for updated developments on this issue.
The Legal Mechanism for Wartime Labor Conscription in Japan
Ever since having to participate in WW1 on the side of the Allies, Japan had become acutely aware of the need to mobilize total national resources in winning modern wars. This conviction was further reinforced by policies introduced in Germany and once the China Incident broke out in 1937 and exposed the economy to the woes of severe production shortages, a series of measures to suspend free enterprise and hand over the reins entirely to government control were introduced in close succession.
A National Requisition Ordinance 国民徴用令 was issued on 8th July 1939 as the Emperor’s Edict #451. The purpose of this ordinance was to (1) Announce compulsory conscription of production manpower to sustain the war effort and (2) Establish wages, salaries and other conditions relating to the hiring of such manpower. This ordinance was the actual implementation of an earlier National Mobilization Law 国家総動員法, passed by the Diet on 1st April 1938, article 4 of which declared that “In times of war, when required for the sake of national mobilization, the government may requisition the manpower of the Empire’s subjects and assign them to national mobilization service, following conditions to be defined by Imperial Edict, but this shall not interfere with Military Conscription duties of those subjects.”
Another ancillary component of this national mobilization of labor was the National Occupation Registration Ordinance 国民職業申告令 issued on 7th January 1939, which required citizens in certain occupations or training programs designated by the Minister of Welfare to register themselves at their local employment agencies. Initially, those required to register were only those in possession of certain job skills (the program started by enlisting 850 construction engineers in 1939), but as the labor shortage worsened as the war progressed, the net was cast wider to include unskilled candidates in the revision that came in August 1943.
When a company critical to the war effort could not hire needed workers through normal means, the above mechanism empowered the Minister of Welfare to pluck a qualified candidate out of the registration list and assign him to the job for which no voluntary takers could be found.
Koreans were exempted from this program until the Cabinet decided on 8th August 1944 to include them, and inductions of Korean male workers began in September 1944. For jobs to be filled in mainland Japan, compulsory relocations were made, but this could no longer continue once the ferry route between Pusan, Korea and Shimonoseki, Japan got severed in March 1945. Thus requisition of Korean workers was in effect for a total of 11 months, and relocation to mainland Japan occurred only during a window of 7 months of the ferry being in service.
Requisitioned Worker Insignia
Insignia and badges related to the program described above are today misidentified in the US collector’s market as civilian or war veteran’s wound badges, which is total nonsense.
The program had no symbol mark for the first 4 years of its existence and only got an emblem in August 1943. This came at the time of expanding the reach of the National Requisition Ordinance on 1st August 1943, which was accompanied by a regulation issued by the Ministry of Welfare on 10th August 1943 called the Requisitioned Worker Code of Conduct 応徴士服務規律, consisting of 7 articles defining required attitudes, work morale, confidentiality and penalties for infractions.
From this point, conscripted workers were given the title of Ohchou-shi 応徴士 (literally meaning “Specialist Responding to Requisition”), which gave them a nominal government employee status and in return subjected them to similar codes of conduct as applied to soldiers and Gunzoku.
This program was also no longer merely for filling job vacancies, as whole companies were sometimes requisitioned to come under government control, in which cases the company owner himself was an Ohchou-shi, not only his employees. This new nominal status of Ohchou-shi was honored by a handsomely designed insignia.
The last article, Article 7 said, “Requisitioned Workers are to wear the insignia as defined by the attached drawing on the left chest. Those who are not requisitioned workers may not wear the insignia.” This insignia was issued as a cloth patch.
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