Uniformed Korean American men stand in rows outside of building. Flags of the U.S. and South Korea are seen behind last row of men.
Module 2: Korean Americans during World War II and the Korean War
Have their ongoing ties with Korea impacted the lives of Korean Americans?
On the evening of December 7, 1941, a second-generation Korean American named Mary Paik Lee stopped by her usual grocery store in town. Having gone into the fields earlier that day, she had not yet heard the morning’s news: Japanese planes had bombed Hawaiʻi’s Pearl Harbor. The United States’ entry into World War II was imminent. What she thought would be a quick, routine stop at the store quickly changed when she faced a room full of angry white faces staring at her. A customer announced, “There’s one of them damned Japs now. What’s she doing here?”
Hannah Nixon owned the store along with her husband. A devout Quaker committed to justice and peace, she responded, “Shame on you, all of you. You have known Mrs. Lee for years. You know she’s not Japanese, and even if she were, she is not to blame for what happened at Pearl Harbor! This is the time to remember your religion and practice it.” 1 Eager to avoid trouble, Lee exited the store without buying anything.
The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared the United States at war with the Empire of Japan, and the country formally entered World War II. US War Department officials initially categorized both Japanese citizens and Koreans as “enemy aliens.” Nonetheless, Korean Americans unanimously welcomed the United States’ formal entry into the war. They were hopeful that US involvement would help them achieve the long-awaited independence of their homeland.
This module is about Korean American experiences during World War II, the Korean War, and the postwar occupation years.
How did war shape Korean immigration to the United States?
How did war influence Korean Americans’ experiences in the US?
How did war affect Korean American women?
Pearl Harbor and Korean Americans
Korean Americans joined in the domestic war mobilization effort with gusto. Koreans in Hawaiʻi and California bought war bonds in sums disproportionate to their community’s modest size. Korean men ineligible to serve in the US military formed the civilian “Tiger Brigade” unit in Los Angeles to support the California National Guard and to demonstrate their martial spirit and loyalty. These actions demonstrated a commitment to the goal of an Allied victory, not only as Koreans eager to see a Japanese defeat, but as patriotic Americans. According to professor and historian Lili M. Kim, Koreans in the US who used the language of American democracy framed their “devotion to Korean independence as an extension of American democratic ideals.” 2
Image 14.02.01 — The US National Guard Tiger Brigade, pictured here in 1943, was formed by patriotic Korean American men ineligible to serve in the US military.
Regardless of their actions, Koreans became targets of racial violence carried out by white Americans in the name of “patriotism.” The experiences of Mary Paik Lee, described at the beginning of this module, can teach us more about the discrimination Korean Americans faced during the war era. After Lee exited the grocery store, she found her one-year-old son, whom she had left in the car, surrounded by teenagers with raised fists. White customers at her family’s roadside stand cursed at and even slapped her other son. In her memoir, Lee describes the danger that her family and community felt:
“They were afraid to go out at night; many were beaten even during the day. Their cars were wrecked. The tires were slashed, the radios and batteries removed. Some friends driving on highways were stopped and their cars were overturned. It was a bad time for all of us.” 3
Image 14.02.02 — Mary Paik Lee; her husband, HM Lee; and son, Henry, in Anaheim, California, in 1926. The Hawaiʻi-based family would face racial discrimination and harassment in the wake of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Korean, Chinese, and other Asian communities in the US reported verbal abuse and even physical violence at the hands of white Americans who associated them with the Japanese empire. From 1942 to 1946, the US government forcibly removed and incarcerated Japanese Americans in concentration camps, violating their civil rights. Racial violence against Asian groups continued and became so pronounced that some Koreans on the West Coast and in Hawaiʻi wore Korean flag badges to ward off would-be attackers who assumed they were Japanese. It was often difficult for Koreans to find protection because US government officials still lumped Koreans together with the Japanese empire based on the countries’ colonial relationship.
Image 14.02.03 — LIFE magazine (December 1941) used offensive racial distinctions to differentiate between Japanese and “friendly” Chinese allies. While Koreans did not identify as either, they were often mistaken as “enemy aliens” and subject to verbal abuse and even physical violence.
Postwar Occupation
Despite these challenges, Korean Americans looked ahead with hope that Korea would become self-governing after the war. To their disappointment, Korea’s path toward independence after World War II was convoluted and drawn out.
In 1943, as the Pacific War raged on, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and China wrote the Cairo Declaration. This short text created a plan for stripping Japan of its colonies. While the three Allied powers expressed their commitment to Korea’s independence from Japan, they said it would happen “in due course” 4 —placing Korea’s self-governance on a vague timeline. This set the stage for the United States and the Soviet Union to begin a joint occupation of Korea in 1945–1948, splitting the peninsula at the 38th parallel after Japan’s surrender. Soviet occupation forces controlled the north, and a US military government was stationed in the south.
The postwar occupation of Korea was intended to promote power-sharing to keep the peace, but did not succeed. As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union worsened, the peninsula became a site of struggle. Korean leaders also clashed, with some working with the Soviets in the northern occupation zone and others with the US military in the south.
The result was not a united, self-governing Korea. Instead, contested elections led to the formal division of the peninsula in 1948. That May, Syngman Rhee was elected president of the newly established Republic of Korea (South Korea), an anti-Communist government with close ties to the United States. More than half of potential voters boycotted the elections, claiming that Rhee was corrupt and the election was rigged. In the fall, Kim Il Sung was elected as leader of a newly created Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), a Communist state friendly to the Soviet Union.
The Korean War began between the two governments when North Korean soldiers crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea on June 25, 1950; the United States sent troops to defend Rhee’s government, and China later sent soldiers to help the North Korean side. The war displaced millions of Koreans, separated families, decimated local economies, and flattened cities. Though a truce ended the fighting in 1953, there has never been an official treaty to end the war. A division between the two sides of the country, intended to be temporary, still remains today.
Image 14.02.04 — The Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula. It serves as a buffer zone between North and South Korea as a result of the division at the 38th parallel after Japan’s surrender in World War II.
The Korean War and Women
Korean women and children began migrating to the United States in the 1950s as a result of the Korean War and US military presence in the region. American soldiers and Korean locals, including women, increasingly interacted during this period. In some cases, Korean civilians worked directly for the US military, doing everything from cooking and cleaning to secretarial work and translation. Some Korean women met American soldiers at businesses around military bases, known as “camptowns.” Businesses in camptowns catered to American soldiers and included drugstores, restaurants, night clubs, and brothels.
Between 1950 and 1970, nine out of ten Koreans coming to the United States were the spouses of US military servicemen or adoptees joining mostly white American families. This second wave of Korean migrants marked a significant change from the first wave, which was composed mostly of Korean men and had created a long-standing gender imbalance within Korean American communities. In addition, post-1950 arrivals of women and children often had limited interaction with existing Korean communities because they settled with spouses and adoptive families in the Midwest and the South—far away from California, Hawaiʻi, and other sites with larger, more established Korean populations.
Korean women who were engaged to or married US servicemen initially faced immigration barriers. Soldiers and military leaders lobbied to ease pre-1952 restrictions on Asian immigration. Congress passed several measures that exempted the Asian wives and fiancées of American GIs from Asian exclusion. By 1964, about 6,400 Korean women had entered the US as the wife or fiancée of an American soldier.
Image 14.02.05 — Korean brides became an anchor for a burgeoning Korean American population. After the 1965 Immigration Act introduced family reunification, Korean American women sponsored their families to migrate to the US.
These women became an anchor for a burgeoning Korean American population once the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 introduced family reunification policies. Many Korean American women sponsored multiple relatives and thus began a longer pattern of family-based migration that ultimately brought hundreds of thousands of Koreans to the United States. By the year 2000, nearly one-fourth of Koreans living in the US could trace their migration to sponsorship by a military spouse, or “GI bride,” in their family.
Conclusion
Many Korean Americans supported the United States’ entry into World War II and the domestic war effort, believing that their loyalty to American democratic ideals would lead to an independent, democratic Korea. Instead, US and Soviet political and military interests in the peninsula led to postwar occupation and the division of Korea. This international intervention and the ensuing Korean War had significant and long-lasting impacts on Korean Americans and their relationships with Korea and the United States, reshaping immigration, economies, and families. The following module will delve into the subject of Korean adoptees and the transnational adoption industry.
Glossary terms in this module
GI bride Where it’s used
Korean women who married US soldiers and immigrated to the United States as a result of those relationships.
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 Where it’s used
This act, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, officially ended the era of Asian Exclusion and created an immigration system based on family relationships and job skills. The law significantly changed the demographics of Asian immigrants.
occupation Where it’s used
The act of taking control of a territory, region, or state through military means.
transnational adoption Where it’s used
The adoption of a child across national borders from one nation to another nation.
Endnotes
1 Mary Paik Lee, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America. (University of Washington Press, 1990), 95.
2 Lili M. Kim, “The Limits of Americanism and Democracy: Korean Americans, Transnational Allegiance, and the Question of Loyalty on the Homefront during World War II,” Amerasia Journal 29, no. 3 (2003): 81.
