A-bomb survivor’s time to talk

HIROSHIMA, Japan — For nearly 70 years, until he turned 85, Lee Jong-keun hid his past as an atomic bomb survivor, fearful of the widespread discrimination against blast victims that has long persisted in Japan.

But Lee, 92, is now part of a fast-dwindling group of survivors, known as hibakusha, that feels a growing urgency — desperation even — to tell their stories. These last witnesses to what happened 75 years ago this Thursday want to reach a younger generation that they feel is losing sight of the horror.

The knowledge of their dwindling time — the average age of the survivors is more than 83 and many suffer from the long-lasting effects of radiation — is coupled with deep frustration over stalled progress in global efforts to ban nuclear weapons. According to a recent Asahi newspaper survey of 768 survivors, nearly two-thirds said their wish for a nuclear-free world is not widely shared by the rest of humanity, and more than 70 per cent called on a reluctant Japanese government to ratify a nuclear weapons ban treaty.

“We must work harder to get our voices heard, not just mine but those of many other survivors,” Lee said Tuesday at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. “A nuclear weapons ban is the starting point for peace.”

The first U.S. atomic bombing killed 140,000 people in the city of Hiroshima. A second atomic attack on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, killed another 70,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, bringing an end to a conflict that began with its attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 during its attempt to conquer Asia.

About 20,000 ethnic Korean residents of Hiroshima are believed to have died in the nuclear attack. The city, a wartime military hub, had a large number of Korean workers, including those forced to work without pay at mines and factories under Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, 16-year-old Lee, a second-generation Korean born in Japan, was on his way to work at Japan’s national railway authority in Hiroshima when the uranium bomb nicknamed Little Boy exploded. Lee suffered severe burns on his neck that took four months to heal.

Back at work, co-workers wouldn’t go near him, saying he had “A-bomb disease.” Little was known about the effects of the bomb, and some believed radiation was similar to an infectious disease.

Prospective marriage partners also worried about genetic damage that could be passed to children.

Lee lived under a Japanese name, Masaichi Egawa, until eight years ago, when he first publicly revealed his identity during a cruise where atomic bomb survivors shared their stories. Until then, he had not even told his wife he is hibakusha.

“No ethnic Koreans want to reveal their past as hibakusha,” Lee said.