HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) — Diaries of Korean and German atomic-bomb survivors depicting the devastation of Hiroshima and the struggle for postwar compensation are among the exhibits drawing visitors’ attention at the city’s peace museum.

Shin Yong Su, father of the current South Korean consul general in Hiroshima, wrote about how he campaigned for support for Korean victims, while priest Klaus Luhmer described what the city was like only days after the bombing in their journals that were put on public display for the first time.

Shin Hyong Gun, the consul general, provided the documents to the museum for a special exhibition from July 15 to Dec. 14.

“I want visitors to learn that not only Japanese but foreigners also suffered in the atomic bombing, although it is usually said that Japan is the only atomic-bombed country,” Shin said.

Shin’s father, who founded the Korean hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivors) association in 1967, became the first non-Japanese to obtain an atomic-bomb survivor’s certificate in 1974, entitling him to medical allowances.

In a letter also on display that was sent to then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, Shin Yong Su demanded compensation from the Japanese government for Korean victims and urged Japan to extend domestic support measures to atomic-bomb survivors overseas.

“I also thought the exhibition will provide an opportunity to recognize the brutality of colonial rule as many foreigners who were exposed to radiation in the atomic bombing came to Japan against their will,” Shin said, referring to Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.

The consul general’s father was forcibly recruited to work for a Japanese military-designated pharmaceutical company in Hiroshima in 1942 before being exposed to the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945.

An entry in Luhmer’s journal dated Aug. 18, 1945, reads, “On Aug. 6, shortly after 8 a.m., an enormously large fireball appeared above Hiroshima city...so I quickly rushed to the staircase leading to the basement.” He kept the diary in Japanese.

Luhmer came to Hiroshima in January 1945 and was exposed to radiation in the atomic bombing aged 28 at the Nagatsuka monastery for Jesuits.

On Aug. 24 he wrote, “I haven’t known how to put it into words in the past 10 days. A number of times I encountered the most tragic forms of deaths.”

An illustration drawn by Giso Shimomura, among the exhibits, also depicts Luhmer and another foreigner carrying other atomic-bomb survivors in a cart to a relief station for treatment.

Students from China and Southeastern Asian countries, German priests, a total of 12 American prisoners of war and Russians were also among the around 350,000 people living in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing, the museum said.

The exhibition also mentions that eight of the 21 foreign students, invited by the Japanese government as special overseas students from China and Southeast Asia to study in Hiroshima, were killed in the attack.

Chieko Seki, an atomic-bomb survivor who works as a guide at the museum, said, “It is important to tell the story of foreign victims. I’m also encouraged that such a young person was interested in this exhibition,” Seki said after talking to a teenage visitor from Tokyo.

Kyodo, August 10, 2011