Atomic bomb survivors in South Korea still feel the wounds of The Hibakusha

Monday, Shin and about 300 other Hapcheon residents will join atomic bomb survivors in South Korea and other countries in filing suit against the Japanese government for wartime reparations.

The survivors, represented by a team of Japanese lawyers, were spurred on by a Japanese Supreme Court ruling that recognized their right to receive reparations for mental anguish.

Although lawsuits seeking medical benefits have been filed over the years, suits seeking compensation for emotional suffering are a new element in the legal battles between bomb survivors and the Japanese government.

"We’re poor farmers and we are dying off," said Shin, director of a local chapter of the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Assn. "For Japan to really repay us, the amount is uncountable."

An estimated 40,000 Koreans died and 30,000 were injured in the atomic blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For years, survivors lobbied for medical care.

Progress has been slow. Although Japan has paid for medical treatment for its own victims — known as hibakusha, or "explosion-affected people" — foreign survivors were ignored until November 2007, when the Supreme Court voided a 1974 government declaration that atomic bomb survivors living outside Japan could not receive benefits.

The ruling prompted the government to offer $10,000 in compensation to each overseas survivor recognized as an atomic bomb victim in lawsuits already lodged against the state.

Japanese officials say they have been responsive to the survivors.

"Let me emphasize that we take various health and medical measures for survivors living in and out of Japan," said Masato Kumaki, an official with the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. "And we will continue to pursue measures to support atomic bomb survivors under the law."

For Hapcheon residents, the trauma dates to before August 1945, to the forced exodus they say devastated a community. Their dislocation was one small chapter in Imperial Japan’s colonialism of the era, which included annexing Korea in 1910 and invading China in 1937, uprooting hundreds of thousands of people.

"Japanese groups have donated money, reporters from Japan have come to tell our stories, but the Japanese government is useless," Shin said. "They have never admitted that they ruined the lives of thousands of people who lived here."

Across South Korea, 2,665 atomic bomb survivors could eventually file suit as a result of the Japanese court ruling.

But Shin said Japan wasn’t the only country with much to answer for.

"I understand that the U.S. wanted to win the war and avenge Pearl Harbor," he said. "But their scientists knew they would cause terrible carnage. Why did they drop bombs on civilians?"