This weekend, watched a great WWII war film shot in 2011 in South Korea “My Way”! An extraordinary movie based on a true story with a true person, his true name is Yang Kyoungjong. Highly recommend if you are interested in history esp. with WWII.
In the film, Yang’s name is JS Kim, who is a Korean lived in Japan controlled Manchuria when he was conscripted into the Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army to fight against the Soviet Union.
Then he was captured by Red Army as POW(Prisoner of War), sent to a Gulag labor camp. Most POW story will end there till the war is over if he could survived the tough environment. While his first miracle happened — because of the lack of force to fight against German Nazi, Soviet Union decided to force conscript POWs to fight as part of Red Army. Hence Yang *became* a Red Army soldier fighting Nazi.
And he got caught as POW again by Nazi, then the 2nd miracle happened — Nazi decided to use POW to stop the coming Ally army on Normandy beach. Yang *became* a Nazi soldier!
He got caught the 3rd time as POW by US army and eventually ended immigrated to US and lived in Cook County, IL till 1992.
Yang is the ONLY soldier fought for three powers (Japan, Soviet Union, and Germany) during the WWII.
What are the odds this could happen?! And it happened! History has never failed to provide miracles like this one!
I got a question — How could Yang communicate with his fellow soldiers in Red Army which they spoke Russian and in German Nazi troop where they spoke German? One assumption is he is really good at learning language and could quickly learn basic communication which was enough for him to understand orders. Another answer which is more likely is he could not communicate in either Russian or German, he just stayed low and followed what others did.
An amazing war story, re-told as a great film!
