Soldier of Three Armies: Yang Kyoungjong was born on March 3, 1920 in Shin Eui Ju, Korea, during the time Japan ruled his country. In 1938 at the age of 18, he was conscripted into the Kwantung Army in Manchuria, an army group of the Imperial Japanese Army, to fight against the Soviet Union during the Soviet-Japanese Border War. During the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia during 1939, he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and sent to a labor camp. The Second World War had begun, and in 1942, due to the shortage of manpower faced by the Soviets in it's fight against Germany, he, along with thousands of other prisoners, was pressed into service in the Red Army and sent to the Eastern Front. In 1943, during the Third Battle of Kharkov in Ukraine, he was taken prisoner by the German Wehrmacht and was then pressed into service in an Heer ostbattalion, fighting for Germany. Yang was sent to the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, France, close to Utah Beach. Following the D-Day landings by Allied forces in Normandy on June 6, 1944, Yang was captured by American paratroopers of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He was sent to a POW camp in Britain where he remained until the war's end in May 1945. In 1947, he moved to the United States, settling in Evanston, Illinois where he lived out the rest of his life. He married and raised a family of three children, two sons and a daughter. Yang passed away on April 7, 1992. He apparently rarely, if ever, spoke of his incredible wartime experiences, and it wasn't until years after his death that his story was brought to public light. _ Pictured is Yang Kyoungjong after his capture by American troops. Normandy, France. May 1944. Colorized by Marina Amaral.
