Japan’s conscience I found in Hiroshima
LEE YOUNG-HEEThe author is a Tokyo correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.
“Have you ever been to the atomic bomb museum in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang? Not many Koreans know about it.” I felt uneasy when I was asked by a 87-year-old man in Hiroshima.
On Friday, the second day of the Group of 7 (G7) summit in the city, I met Keisaburo Toyonaga. His business card says, “Activist of the Citizens’ Group Helping Atomic Bomb Victims in Korea.” He suffered the atomic bomb damage at age nine and devoted the past 50 years for the rights of the atomic bomb victims living outside Japan, including South Korea, the United States and Brazil.
It is estimated that about 43,000 Koreans returned home after being exposed to radiation by atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. They were living in Japan due to forced labor, conscription and employment.
The Korean radiation victims who stayed in Japan were provided with atomic bomb victims’ notebooks and medical assistance under the Atomic Bomb Victims Support Act by the Japanese government from 1957, but those who returned to Korea were not included in the assistance.
Until the reality of atomic bombs was made public in Korea, they had to fight deteriorating health, economic hardship, and discrimination amid the indifference of the two governments.
It was in 1967 that the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association was established. In 1970, Son Jin-du (1927-2014), an atomic bomb victim in Hiroshima, risked his life and stowed away to begin a lawsuit against the Japanese government to issue atomic bomb victims’ notebooks to the victims in Korea.
The group created to help Son’s efforts in 1972 is the Citizens’ Group Helping Atomic Bomb Victims in Korea. With their support, Son won the case in Japan’s Supreme Court in 1978.
Toyonaga, a former Japanese language teacher, joined the activism in the early 1970s, when he met an atomic bomb victim during his visit to Korea for teachers training. “I thought it doesn’t make sense that people who had been exposed to radiation cannot get any assistance just because they returned home after the war ended.”
For a long time after Son’s victory in the trial, it was hard for Korean victims to get assistance, as they had to visit Japan and apply for the notebook in person. He and many Japanese activists fought to establish a procedure to have radiation victims receive medical treatment at local medical institutions and get medical expenses from Japan through the Red Cross.
On Sunday, the last day of the G7 summit, Korean and Japanese leaders visited the memorial for the Korean victims of the atomic bombing. Toyonaga said that the joint visit “is something that should have happened long ago.”
However, the joint visit should not be the “completion” of the journey, but the “start” of paying attention to the pains of the victims even today. And it should be remembered that there were Japanese people accompanying the journey.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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