Yang Kyong Jong was either the luckiest, or the unluckiest man during his lifetime! Born in 1920 in northwestern part of Korea, his family moved to Manchuria when he was still an infant. Life was hard in Manchuria and his family struggled to survive. The Japanese rule in Manchuria was not quite as stifling as it was in Korea, but nevertheless, it was very tough. Yang was not a Russian-Korean, the uhl mao zeh, who tended to be better educated and better off financially. He was of very humble background, poorly educated, so he did whatever he could to improve his situation.
Prior to World War Two, Japan had its own version of Hitler Youth which was called Dai Nippon Seinen-To. This fascist youth organization spawned several others, of which Yokusan Sonendan became the best known. Sonendan, as it was popularly called, recruited teens in Korea and Manchuria, non-Japanese, grooming them to become loyal Japanese subjects with para-military drills, etc. For someone like Yang, poor and with no education, Sonendan seemed like a good solution, so he joined it when he was fourteen. Little did he realize where this was going to lead him in life.
In 1938, when he turned 18, he was inducted into the Japanese Imperial Army, the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. After some precursory basic training, he was assigned to a work battalion that supported a tank unit. Although non-Japanese were inducted into service, the Japanese did not trust them and did not allow them to serve bearing arms. Only those that distinguished themselves or attended the military academies (Army or Navy) were allowed to serve in combat arms. But they could never rise to General Officer rank, no matter how good they were! So, Yang was essentially inducted to serve on the labor force for the Kwantung Army.
A year later, in 1939, the Kwantung Army unilaterally (without Tokyo's approval, or so they say!) struck across the Manchurian border into Mongolia and Siberia. Yang was among the invasion force. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they vastly underestimated the Soviet strength and capabilities and overestimated their own! The Red Army under the command of General Giorgi Zhukov not only repelled the Japanese invasion, they practically destroyed all of the attacking force, capturing thousands of prisoners, mostly Korean "volunteers." This was the undeclared non-war, the Nomanhan Incident. Yang was captured and among those unfortunate Japanese POWs who were sent off to Gulags in Siberia. Most of them perished in those horrible concentration camps.
In 1942 the Soviet Union was desperate for manpower as it battled the Nazis almost single handedly. They offered their non-Japanese prisoners, those who had survived so far, a chance to leave the Gulags and serve the Red Army. Yang was among those survivors who grabbed the opportunity to leave the concentration camp. Because of his prior experience with the Japanese army serving in a tank support battalion, he was once again assigned to a tank support unit, this time in the Red Army! However, in 1942 the war was going very badly for the Soviet Union, and in one of the big tank battles in the Ukraine, Yang was captured by the Germans. So off he went to the German POW camp which was really no better than the Soviet Gulags, only not as cold!
After surviving the terrible conditions in the German POW camp for two years, in early 1944 he was given an opportunity to don the German uniform. Germany was desperate for manpower and they recruited out of POW camps anyone willing to put on the German uniform. Yang once again found himself in a foreign uniform, this time assigned to a unit which was to help fortify the so-called "Atlantic Wall" in defense against Allied Invasion. He was sent to Normandy with a work battalion made up of non-Germans, former POWs. Well, his career in the Wermacht didn't last long. He was captured by paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division during the D-Day Invasion! The Americans didn't know what to do with him. At first they thought he was Japanese, an ally of Germany, but then they managed to learn that he was Korean, but there was no one who could speak Korean. Yang could speak a smattering of Russian and German, and Japanese, of course, but no English! He was sent to a POW camp in England to ride out the rest of the war.
In 1945, at the conclusion of the war, one of his American interrogators took a liking to him and arranged to have him resettled in America. Yang came to Illinois, just outside of Chicago, and lived the rest of his life there, quietly. He never even told his own children about his background, about his fantastic World War Two experience! He died in 1992. His somewhat early (he was 72 years old) death was partly brought about by health problems that he had from those horrible years in Soviet and Nazi prisons.
Shortly afterwards, a well known South Korean movie director got a hold of Yang's incredible story and decided to make a movie out of it. Naturally, as movie directors are prone to do, he took artistic license and glamourized the whole story making Yang into some sort of an international John Wayne! The movie's story line is so far removed from truth that it is laughable. It is too bad, since the real story, although not glamorous, is worth telling on its own. After all, how many men can lay claim to have served in three different armies in two different wars in a five year span!
Yang may not have had 9 lives like a cat, but he certainly did have at least five lives: At first as a Korean up into his teens, then as a Japanese soldier. He then became a Russian soldier, only to become a German soldier two years later. Then he finally moved to America and lived and died as an American citizen!
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