Korean A-bomb survivors in Japan hold 1st memorial in Hiroshima
The association had planned to hold its own ceremony after a unified memorial commemorating both North and South Korean victims is built, but uncertainty over the project prompted the group to proceed on the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.
Many Koreans were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945, having come to Japan as conscripted laborers or for economic opportunities. An estimated 70,000 were exposed to the blasts, with about 40,000 dying shortly afterward.
The Hiroshima branch of the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan, or Mindan, has been holding its own ceremony every year to mark the Aug. 6 bombing at a monument dedicated to South Korean victims in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park. Its commemorative ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday this year.
Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until the end of the war in 1945, and many Koreans came to work in Japan, including as conscripted laborers, amid a labor shortage.
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