This is a passage about the time after the war, when one of the guards on the Burmese Railway - a Korean - is waiting to be hanged for his treatment of the POWs.
Choi Sang-min noticed how every man at Changi conceived of his destiny differently and invented his past accordingly. Some men had point-blank denied the charges, but they were hanged or were imprisoned for lengthy periods anyway. Some had accepted responsibility but refused to recognise the authority of the Australian trials. They too were hanged or imprisoned for greater or lesser periods. Others denied responsibility, pointing out the impossibility of a lowly guard or soldier refusing to recognise the authority of the Japanese military system, far less refusing to do the Emperor's will. In private they asked a simple question. If they and all their actions were simply expressions of the Emperor's will, why then was the Emperor still free? Why did the American support the Emperor but hang them, who had only ever been the Emperor's tools?
But in their hearts they all knew that the Emperor would never hang and that they would. Just as surely as they had beaten and tortured and killed for the Emperor, the men who didn't accept responsibility were now to hang for the Emperor. They hanged as well and as badly as the men who accepted responsibility or the men who said they never did any of it, for as they jiggled about beneath the trapdoor one after another, their legs jerked all the same....
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