KANEKO Hiroaki

Born in Japan in 1943, Hiroaki was the son of Korean immigrants.

His father, Kim In Jo, had emigrated to Japan with his family in 1924, when he was 10 years old, as his own father had sought work opportunities. The family eventually settled in Hiroshima’s Fukushima neighbourhood in 1927.

After graduating from school at the age of 16, In Jo worked various jobs: in a rubber factory, as a cook, as a greengrocer and – later, during the war – for a transportation company.

In Jo returned briefly to Pusan, Korea, in 1937 to marry Yoon Ge Hwa. The couple raised four children in Hiroshima: Kinue, Shizue, Matsue and Hiroaki.

They gave the children Japanese names. In Jo’s own Japanese name was Kaneko Seizo. From 1940, Japan forced Koreans to register and use Japanese names, an imperial policy designed to facilitate assimilation and control.

In Jo remembered a strange atmosphere on the night of 5 August – the eve of the nuclear bombing – as many shooting stars streaked across the sky above Hiroshima.

The next morning, Hiroaki and his extended family ate breakfast together. The group included In Jo’s uncle and aunt, who were staying with them from Osaka, and his brother’s family.

The nuclear bomb exploded just as they were finishing their meal, its powerful shockwave crashing through the house. Most of the family members managed to crawl out of the wreckage.

However, Hiroaki and Matsue weren’t among them. Fires began spreading through the ruined houses, and the family was forced to flee. In Jo found Matsue and pulled her from the rubble just in time, but they were unable to save Hiroaki.

As they fled, In Jo stopped to help neighbours escape from a collapsed house, and in the confusion he became separated from his family. It took him six days to finally find his wife, and another six before he could find Shizue, Matsue and Kinue, who had been taken to a temporary aid station in Saka town, just east of Hiroshima city.

The following day, In Jo interred Hiroaki’s bones at a temple in Hiroshima’s Koi neighbourhood.

Kinue, her two sisters and her mother left Hiroshima to stay with relatives in Osaka. However, they soon began experiencing symptoms of acute radiation sickness.

Shizue was the first to die. In Jo received word of her death on 27 August and went to join his family. The day after he arrived, Matsue died as well. Kinue too died on 18 September at Osaka’s Red Cross Hospital.

By the end of the year, the surviving family members returned to Korea, which had regained its independence from imperial Japan at the end of the war. They arrived in Pusan on the night of 30 December.

Although In Jo and Ge Hwa feared that their exposure to radiation would prevent them from having further children, they were able to welcome a new, healthy baby.

In a written testimony, In Jo emphasised the diversity of nuclear victims, noting that he had also seen American and Chinese prisoners of war in Hiroshima in the weeks before the attack.

“It is clear that Japanese and Koreans were not the only people who experienced the bombing,” he wrote.