The Atomic Bombs’ Forgotten Korean Victims

Tanaka Teromi was thirteen years old when the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, in August 1945. The explosion hit him unconscious. After he came to, he and his mother walked through the “ruins of the lions” in the city – save the construction to the ash “as much as the port”, about three kilometers in the distance. “The charred body of a aunt was found in the remains of her house,” he remembers late last year, from Dis in Oslo. Now ninety -two, he was in the city to accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Nihun Heidkio, the Japanese Association of Survivors of the Atoms Bomb. Tanaka said: “The deaths that she witnessed at the time hardly can be described as human death,” Tanaka said. He spoke quietly, and thanks to his bright cheeks and thighs, he seemed weak. The story was filled with a chill, but it was practiced well.

The survivors of the bombings are called Hiroshima and Nagasaki, HibakoshaNihon Hidankyo was formed in 1956. In many contracts that followed, they demanded medical care and social recognition from the Japanese government. They have proven what they asked of all governments more eloquent: “the immediate cancellation of nuclear weapons.”

Japan is the only country that has suffered from mass killings from the nuclear war. So it was great when he later indicated in Tanaka’s speech to the difficulties of “the survivors of the bomb who live abroad”, especially “Korean” Hibakosha Those who were exposed to atomic bombings in Japan and returned to their countries of origin. “This was likely for viewers all over the world. Hibakosha“?

In fact, two of them traveled from South Korea to be with Tanaka, in Norway, as part of the delegation of Nihun Heidkio. Jeong Won-Sul, eighty-year-old wears black and white Hanook The lawsuit was a baby in 1945, in Hiroshima, she was born to the Koreans who were forced to work in Japan by the colonial government. His mother was close to the bombing she lost. His father lived with chronic pain. Jeong himself was respiratory and digestive diseases. The other Korean represents the delegation, Lee Tae Jay, which is sixty -five, of the second generation of the second generation HibakoshaHis father was arrested in the repercussions of the bomb in Nagasaki, while he was recruited to work in a Mitsubishi ammunition factory, and it seems that the effects of radiation have been transferred to Lee. In his forties, I was diagnosed with stomach cancer. It also has anemia and common troubles. second generation Hibakosha It suffers from some types of cancer, depression, anemia and asthma at a large rate higher than the general population rates. For Korean HibakoshaJapan was not the “only” victim of the “victim”, telling me the Yonhap News reporter in Oslo. “We must look at the truth directly in the eye.”

Among the hundreds of thousands hit by the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was from twenty to twenty percent of Korea. Japan colonized Korea in 1910, and by mid -century, two million Koreans lived in Japan – some of which voluntarily, and others as forced workers, ordered a gap in the war mechanism. When Japan surrendered to the allied forces, in 1945, the empire was no longer, and most Koreans returned to the house, which were divided at the time: the United States occupied the south and in the Soviet north. A few thousand survivors of the Korean bomb remained in Japan, to become Zenichi HibakoshaOr Japanese Korean survivors. (The term “zainichi” refers to temporary residence, but it is applied even to those who were in Japan for several generations) HibakoshaZenici was deprived of specialized medical coverage and was marginalized by Nihon Hidankyo, which was developed by the Japanese experience as Sui Generis.

Zenichi Hibakosha Uncomfortable questions about “Japanese colonialism, nationalism in Japan and Korea, and the Cold War in East Asia,” written by Yuko Takahashi, a human rights researcher at the University of Osaka Metropolitan, in her new book, “Korean nuclear diaspora: Movement for compensation for victims of the Korean atomic bomb in JapanTakahashi defines the complex links between Zainichi HibakoshaJapanese HibakoshaKorean Hibakosha In North and South Korea. Over the years, these groups have worked together and on the crosses, too, driven by seeing the competition for history. Their wounds are noticeably new, given the actual dates of the bombings. Despite most of the first generation Hibakosha They died, their descendants inherited their goals, and in some cases, their diseases. The second and third generations continue to pressure the material compensation and the sincerity of nuclear power. It also represents the degree that, after eighty years, there was an “incomplete settlement at the societal level” of the victims of nuclear atrocities.

Before the survivors of A-Bomb became a movement, before embracing them Hibakosha The poster, were victims in need of care. The United States, Tokyo, who had been carried out earlier in the war, killed about one hundred thousand people, but the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no precedent. There was the immediate massacre-as up to two hundred thousand died during the first few months-the radiation and their toxins followed in the long term. With the reconstruction of Japan, some survivors had to rely on the medical services provided by the occupied American forces. According to a 1947 report commissioned by the US Secretary of War, “investigating the nature of losses was more important” than already helping people. American officials told Japanese, “They will not bear any responsibility for treating cases,” US officials told Japanese.

The first medical program for Japanese Hibakosha It was prepared in the mid -fifties, in response to a distant accident. In 1954, the United States tested nuclear bombs in Pikini Atoul, in the Marshall Islands. A Japanese fishing boat, lucky dragon No. 5, occurred to sail during the repercussions. Twenty -three crew suffered from radioactive poisoning, and one of them died that year; Many in the country were hesitant to buy seafood, for fear of pollution. This incident “led to the movement of anti -nuclear weapons in the country,” written by Takahashi. A group of women in Tokyo distributed a petition against nuclear tests, and raised the signatures of “about 60 percent of the population over the age of fifteen years.” As the Anthropology Lisa Union’s Anthropology also noted, the lucky dragon incident “linked the atomic sites in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the bikini” and produced a triple idea of ​​”nuclear attacks that victims of the Japanese nation and people as a whole.”

The following year, Hiroshima hosted the global conference against atomic bombs and hydrogen, where, for the first time, “Hybacocha’s dilution was added to the agenda of hostile bombs of nuclear weapons,” Takahashi wrote. Survivors can apply for Hibakosha A certificate, which is entitled to obtain health services and cash benefits. The eligibility has been identified through factors such as the individual distance from “Hypocense” and the number of days before the bombing has entered an affected area. There were direct victims, uterine victims (Tina Hibakousha) And the victims who passed through Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the following weeks as workers in responding to disasters or bad lucky passengers (Newchi Hibakousha).

Both cities were major industrial and military centers, and thus the home of tens of thousands of Korean colonial workers and their families. However, Correen Zenichi was effectively excluded from Hibakosha The interest system. They were told that they are not qualified because of their strange situation, or that they need a Japanese witness to prove their eligibility; Sometimes they were removed because the Japanese spoke is fluently. Many were executed and lived in what was known as “poor neighborhoods”. The survivors of Zenshi did not fit with the idea of ​​”nationalism”-“Japan’s unique sense of the victim”-which was carried out by active groups such as Nihon Hidankyo, written by Takahashi. The conditions were worse for the Korean Hibakosha Who returned to the Korean peninsula. North and South Korea were moving from Japanese rule to the occupation of the Cold War. There was little awareness, not to mention health care designed for survivors of the bomb. Korean Hibakosha He was also forced to face the fact that their citizens celebrated the bombings as the event that “liberated the Korean nation from the Japanese colonial rule.”

By nineteen paid, Hibakosha Identity was established enough, and the state of Korean survivors is bad enough, which began a cross -patriotic movement. In 1968, the Moon Hui gang, Zenichi HibakoshaI submitted a general certificate at a conference in Japan – the first time that many Japanese have learned, including victims’ advocates, that there was there Hibakosha He lives in Korea. When he was a child, a gang with his family moved from Korea to Hiroshima, and he was working in a shipbuilding factory in Mitsubishi when the corn bomb exploded. His father, brother and sister died. The gangs remained in Hiroshima after the war, not sure what he will find in the homeland. Takahashi writes: “He could not decide his mind as he knew political and social confusion in Korea.”

In 1970, South Korea Hibakosha Jane Du traveled to Japan, in the hope of “receiving medical treatments for his radiation diseases.” Request it to Hibakosha However, the certificate was rejected “on the basis that his place of residence was outside Japan.” In 1978, he took his case through the Japanese courts, and finally, in 1978, he opened a way for foreign victims – although Japan will issue this aid as charitable, not “compensation for the state.” Korea was interviewed in Zenshi for the documentary, Park Soo Nam Hibakosha Those who then arrived in Japan to receive specialized care – for hole wounds, and missing eyes – after years of truth. (In South Korea, there was no official policy to help us, “a woman tells her; Hibakosha Certificate “was just a piece of paper” Hibakosha Living in cities like Hapcheon, nicknamed Hiroshima from Korea due to the high population of returning survivors. North Korea has made its own surveys, with the help of Zenici and Japanese visitors.

In the next five decades, Japanese and Korean Hibakosha It has become central figures in the global movement hostile to nuclear weapons. They have succeeded in pressuring Japan to announce the ban and development of nuclear weapons, possess nuclear weapons, and provide assistance to survivors abroad. In a Treaty signed in 1965, Japan paid five hundred million dollars to settle all colonial demands and war time with South Korea, and stressed that there is nothing in debt to the Korean HibakoshaCoercive workers, or “comfort women” who used sexual sexy servants. But in 1990, thanks Hibakosha The invitation, Japan announced that it would give South Korea about thirty million dollars to treat it abroad Hibakosha. A Hibakosha The Nursing House was built in Hapchon.