Beneath the untroubled blue of a summer sky, a quiet assembly gathered at a modest shrine in Hapcheon county, South Korea, last week.
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Here, far from the sites of devastation, Korean survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings came together to remember, to mourn and to insist that their story, though marginalised for so long, would not be forgotten.
Some leaned heavily on canes, others clutched handkerchiefs in trembling hands. The altar, adorned with white chrysanthemums, stood at the centre of an overwhelming silence – both an expression of sorrow and a testament to a history long consigned to the shadows.
This gathering on Wednesday marked the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of 1945. Survivors and their families, many now elderly, travelled to this tranquil town to honour their dead and to make their voices heard in a world that has too often ignored them.
“We hid that we were victims after returning to our village,” said 83-year-old Ahn Won-sang, whose family was in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. “When people found out you were in Japan, they avoided you. They thought they’d get contaminated just by being near atomic bomb survivors.”
More than 100,000 Koreans, most of them in Japan as forced labourers, were victims of the atomic bombings, making up roughly 20 per cent of all casualties.