Many of you that follow my blog know that I criticize Oh My News every once in a while. I maintain that Oh My News is an interesting concept it just needs better editorial over sight IMHO. However, this recent article about the victims of the Hiroshima bombing I felt was very well written because the author let the people tell the story instead of the writer trying to create a story by reinterpreting history as Oh My News has done in the past. Here are some quotes from the article I found interesting:
“We used to chant during the war ‘Be united in one mind like a fireball, 100 million people,’ she recalls. “Then when the bomb fell the trucks came around and ignored women and children, and just helped the healthy men. We were no use to them. That’s when I first understood what war really was.”
“I’ve been to Hawaii, Korea, China, Okinawa and the U.S. and seen for my own eyes what we did so now I can say now what I like. I criticize all governments, including Japan and America. I tell children to come to Hiroshima and see what war means.
“I knew nothing at the time, but that is how we were educated. We were told until the day the bomb fell that we were winning the war. Every day we were told: Die for your country! That’s the terrible power of education, so I ask teachers to tell children more about the war to avoid making the same mistakes. I fear people will forget.”
When the Dome was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, the U.S. and China objected. America said it was “concerned about the lack of historical perspective” in the nomination. China worried that people who deny the facts of history might “utilized the Dome for harmful purposes.”
Official Hiroshima defends against these claims ritually: “We don’t intend to play up our victim-hood,” says Minoru Hataguchi, Director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. “But I appreciate it must seem that way to others. We make efforts here to show what Japan did to other Asian countries.”
I find this comment about not playing up one’s victimhood interesting because I don’t see the survivors of the atomic bombings demanding compensation from the US government like Korean civilian victims of the Korean War. Maybe it is a cultural thing I don’t know; I’m sure the commenters out there have an opinon, but for whatever reason Koreans seem quick to demand compensation. However, as this article in the Joong Ang Ilbo states there are Korean victims of the atomic bombings wanting compensation from the Japanese government:
HAPCHEON, South Gyeongsang ? Three years after a Japanese court ruled that victims of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, no matter where they live in the world, are eligible for support from Tokyo, activists in Korea are struggling to establish the rights of more than 400 South Koreans.
This small town in South Gyeongsang province has been referred as Korea’s Hiroshima because it has 609 people who faced radiation and blast effects in Hiroshima. With the assistance of Seoul and Tokyo, the Red Cross of South Korea in 1990 opened a welfare center in Hapcheon for atom bomb victims.
The problem some of these elderly people are having is proving they were at Hiroshima that day. Lack of documents and witnesses to verify their claims. I can understand the frustrations of these people but the Japanese government is providing compensation to Koreans with legitimate paperwork verifying them in Hiroshima that day.
The Japanese government also recently had a ceremony honoring Korean victims of the bombing:
HIROSHIMA — A memorial service for Koreans who died in or after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, many after being brought to Japan as forced laborers, was held in the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on Friday, a day ahead of the 60th anniversary of the bombing.
The ceremony at a cenotaph in the park dedicated to Korean victims drew about 350 attendees including South Korean survivors and relatives of Koreans who died as a result of the atomic bombing of the western Japan city on Aug. 6, 1945. (Kyodo News)
I’m sure somebody out there is going to comment that the Japanese ceremony was not sincere enough.
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3:31 pm on February 18th, 2007 1
Not only atomic-bom victims, but also many Japanese civilians got killed in the WW II. However, only soldiers and its relatives have offcial rights to get compensation, called “ONKYU”, from the Japanese government. There are two priciples to make this war compensation policy - i) after the WW II, it was impossible to compensate to all the war deads and injuries, simply because of the insufficient national wealth, ii) it was considered the national hardships for all the Japanese nationals and the hardship should be equally shared by all the Japanese nationals.
The compensation to the atomic-bob victims is an exceptional case to the principles. I believe it surely comes from the pure humanitarianism.
Those Korean atomic-bomb victims, were former “Japanese nationals”, since they came from the peninsula, mainly because of the econimical hardship at that time. However, they haven’t been and aren’t Japanese nationals after the WW II (their nationalities changed to either NK or SK, whichever they had chosen at the time).
Unless they selected to become Japanese natioals at that time (they could have selected this way), they have no official right to shamelessly request Japan for this specific-purpose compensation, since the nation-to-nation compenation to the SK was officially settled in 1965 (It must be noted, the SK president Pak claimed that SK should get the compensation for NK too). There is no international treaty to force Japan to provide the special purpose compensation to the other nantionals.
Why the Koreans always have a right to condemn Japan for everything?