THE SILENT ASHES OF THE BOMBED KOREANS
Told by Pak Su Ryong, a 62-year-old Korean resident in Nagasaki; documented by Mrs. Michiko Ishimure in Summer, 1968.
The sky was coming down. The whole sky had fallen to the top of the mountains. The sky, foot by foot, you know, was descending, falling down-I saw it just as I dashed out from the bomb-shelter. My goodness! What had happened? No more daylight! I hadn't seen the "pika," 'cause I was in the shelter. I couldn't believe my eyes.
I was mixed up. My two children-I don't know how I carried them along. In my arms? Or, on my back? I was out of my mind. Couldn't see anything, you know. The whole world was pitch dark. I could see no street. To move I had to push aside debris like a dog, with my forefeet-no, I mean forehands. Sometimes I jumped, and then I crawled. I thought I jumped over a timber. It was a human body. I jumped over a human body, but it was a timber. I looked up at the sky to see if it was still coming down. I saw the sun hanging there just like a ripe persimmon. Terrible. Terrible.
Maybe there were 3,000 Koreans who'd been brought to the Mitsubishi Shipyard. Four thousand at Mitsubishi Munitions. All perished. People say a 6,000-degree heat fell upon them. It's far more terrible than a thunderbolt. All of them had been put into shacks. Just like dogs or pigs. Many were from the North, I guess. No going outside; no talking with other people. If more than three got together, the cop locked them up. The cops were about to turn all the Koreans into prisoners.
They were fed with bean cakes. That's feed for pigs, you know. Of course they are people. So they fled the shacks. Some fellows were saved from the bomb 'cause they'd escaped from there. Oh, yes, Mr. Kim of the Mindan Association is one of them. I had my own house at the Shirovam area and I was a member of the Neighborhood Association. So after the warning siren I went into the bomb-shelter and survived. You know what happened to those guys in the shacks.
They must have parents. Brothers, too. Do you know how these fellows were brought over here? How could you? You ask the dead man? How do you research them? The bombing was not the beginning of the killing. There were more before that.
How do you think we were brought over here? We were told that Korea and Japan are one and the same country. "You go to Japan to win the war, to serve the country." This wasn't my country, you know. We were brought over here to work for some other country. Not ours. Even if the government wants to know now who was from the South and who was from the North, the bomb turned the list into ashes. They died, not even leaving ashes. How can you know people who are now nobody?
The government says, "Come and get the special certificate for atom bomb patients." So we go, and they say, "Bring two witnesses who were around when the bomb dropped." All my neighbors died of the bomb. How could I bring them? Bring a ghost? Don’t you say that a dead man can say nothing?
After the bombings, it was Korean dead bodies that were left until the last. 'Cause many Japanese survived, very many, but very few Koreans. So the Koreans couldn't help it. Everybody knew they were dead Koreans if they were all together. 'Cause Koreans were kept together when alive. Like in a prison. And they were driven to work like hell.
Koreans were at Mitsubishi Munitions, Nagasaki Steel, and Mitsubishi Electric. Chinese were also there. After the bombing, people outside Nagasaki took a long time to get here. 'Cause they were walking on foot. But crows came here first, 'cause they were flying. They came in a big flock. And flies came here too. And the crows ate the eyeballs of the Korean bodies that were left there.
Nobody knew where the crows came from but there were so many They ate eyeballs. Then it looked like the dead bodies were moving. Moving? No, it was maggots that were moving. The Japanese worried. 'cause it smelled terrible. So they brought over prisoners from the Isahaya Prison. And they started to cremate the bodies the way they broil sardines. They laid timbers first then Koreans on top of them, then timbers and then... After piling them high, they poured gasoline and lit it. Cremation takes time, you know. Charred bodies dropped down one after another. Just like broiling sardines. The people of Nagasaki must know the story. Many Korean school-girls were brought over here, too, as a "volunteer corps".
They were 16- or 17-year-old girls, you know. They were wandering about in the ruins. A girl's guts hung from her vagina. She was naked. That girl must have died soon. First, people thought they saw a strange red testis hanging. Then they realized it was a girl because she had a rich breast. If her parents saw it, how in the world would they feel? Was she brought all the way over here for that? How could anybody know about those girls now, the atom bomb maidens of Korea? No girl escaped death, I guess. More than 10,000 Koreans were burned to death. In a moment. Under the roofs of those shacks. By 6,000-degree heat. A white paper on the atom bomb victims? How could anyone do research on them? The people who feel most bitter are all long dead.