The Forgotten Foreign Victims Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki
The story of the forgotten Korean victims who met tragedy in the factories of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
The world remembers that on August 6t and 9, 1945, nuclear bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Several hundred thousand people died as a direct or indirect result of the bombings. What is less remembered is the tens of thousands of nameless Korean labourers who also perished during these horrific events.
Korean labourers
In 1910, Korea, or Joseon as it was called then, had been forcibly absorbed into the Japanese Empire. Over the next 35 years, Korea became a huge source of labour first for the Japanese industrial effort, then for the war effort against China, and then against the Allies from 1941. During the 1930s the Korean population in Japan increased to around 419,000, mainly consisting of labourers in Japan’s factories.
In 1944, facing defeat and a dwindling of manpower the Japanese government instituted conscription and full mobilisation of Koreans for the Japanese war effort. Over the course of the war five million Koreans were conscripted, of which approximately 600,000 were brought to Japan as civilian labour. Koreans were not the only ones affected, but due to their country’s…
