III: Foreign Victims of the Bomb
When the Pacific War grew desperate and manpower and materials critically scarce, Koreans and Chinese were brought to Japan as forced labor. Also, there were students here from Southeast Asia, attracted by favorable scholarships offered by the Government in its effort to build a strong and united Asia. This was part of Japan's so-called "Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" program, a plan to domineer over this part of the world. So it happened that there were many foreign victims of the bomb.
The largest number, however, were Koreans. Between 1939 and 1945 some 1,000,000 had been impressed into labor in Japan and another 4,500,000 mobilized as a labor force within Korea. 370,000 were drafted as soldiers civilian military workers. According to the Ministry of th Interior records, 68,274 Koreans were in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1943, increasing to 81,863 the next year. It is reasonable estimate then, that when the bomb fell them were as many as 30,000 in Hiroshima City.
The membership of the Korean A-Bomb Victims' Mutual Protective Association was 1790 as of June, 1968 and reported deaths of victims these members knew of personally numbered 264. It can only be surmised how many died unreported—and untreated.
A Korean Schoolgirl
"Suddenly, with what I thought was a lightening flash, I heard a great explosion. Clapping my hands over eyes and ears I threw myself to the ground, and then a stone lantern fell over on me," wrote Fukujun Rin. She has told her story, "Born in Hiroshima," as a contribution to this record. Rin san was then fifteen, a pupil in the Third Intermediate School, and lived with her parents in Minami Machi in Hiroshima.
" 'Help, help,' I screamed out again and again, but no one came to save me. Little by little I was able to work free. When I got to Miyuki Bridge, my arms and face began to smart. I looked down at them and saw the burned flesh of my arms hanging in shreds. It throbbed and throbbed words cannot describe the pain.
"About the middle of December, my family of eight and I repatriated to Korea. A girl entirely bald, I became a laughing stock in public. Of course I couldn't get a job, but for a long time had to live the life of an invalid.
Years later, in December of 1968, Rin san came to Kyoto to represent her country at a memorial service for Korean victims of World War II. While in Japan she asked for treatment at the Hiroshima Red Cross A-Bomb Hospital, but was obliged to leave before it could be completed because her visa identified her as a tourist, thus disqualifying her to receive A-Bomb certificate privileges. Such privileges would have included free medical examination and treatment; lacking these, she soon found the medical fee beyond her means.
Other Asian Students
Under the auspices of the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere Cultural Interchange Program, "Selected Scholarship Students" from Mainland China and "Special Scholarship Students" from Southern areas were studying at the Hiroshima College of Arts and Sciences and Hiroshima College of Education. At the time of the bomb there were twelve or thirteen such Chinese students. There were also four to six Manchurian and Mongolian students living in the home of a doctor near the hypocenter who died in the blast.
Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, Borneo and other areas were represented by more than twenty students. Among those still living are the Chief Minister of Brunei, His Excellency Pengiran Yusuf, and four of his countrymen. Another survivor Mr. Ariffin Bey, is now First Secretary at the Indonesian Embassy in Tokyo. He was a student at the College of Arts and Sciences and was waiting with three other foreign students for a lecture on science. He writes.
"The teacher, picking up a piece of chalk and raising it to write on the blackboard, was saying, "As I told you last week...' when in that instant a light leaped in through the window on our left. Suddenly it was pitch dark. Our wooden building was demolished. An earthquake? A timebomb explosion? No one knew what had happened.
"Crawling out of the ruins, we came out on a wide street. Here and there were fires. Many children were screaming from the pain of arms shredded of skin." Bey and the others ran to their rooming house and rescued an upper classman, Sagara san, from beneath a fallen chest of drawers, and then they ran to the river.
"About thirty young girl students of a labor service corps lay on the bank on the verge of death. The fires were coming steadily nearer, so we decided to load the girls on the rafts and take them away. I don't remember how many we carried, but there were two rafts full of them. In the river, as far as the eye could see, burned and swollen people screamed and cried. They seemed to have been flayed alive."