Chapter 1 The Life of the Founder

  The End of the Japanese Colonial Period

 Japan had already begun its invasion of China by the late 1930s. With the onset of hostilities against America in December 1941, World War II was emerging as an Armageddon.

Japan inhibited every cultural activity that defined the Korean people as a race. Korean language newspapers and magazines were shut down, and executives of organizations promotiing the Korean language were arrested and tortured. The use of Japanese language became compulsory and Koreans were compelled to take Japanese names.

700,000 Korean men were taken to Japan as slave labor, and innumerable innocent young women were provided to soldiers on the battlefront as "comfort wemen.". Other young Korean men were conscripted into the invading Japanese armies.

At home, Japan faced an emergency situation as the war progressed. The school Sun Myung Moon was attending shortened its academic schedule by six months. He graduated in September 1943, returning to Heukseok-dong in Seoul by the end of that year, and worked for the Kashima-gumi electrical engineering group. In October 1944, he was arrested by the notoriously brutal Gyeonggi provincial Japanese police for the anti-colonialist activities he had been involved with in Tokyo, and was severely tortured. He was released in Feburary of the following year.

The surrender of Japan in August 1945, following the first use of atomic weapons in history against Hiroshima and Nagasaki hastened the end of World War II, which had exacted a toll in blood and tears from so many.  On that day, August 15, when everyone embreaced each other in joy, one young man alone in a small back room, rather than shout with joy, wept in the embrace of Heaven and in contemplation of the future of the Korean people. This was Sun Myung Moon.