Gone with ‘picadon’ on Aug. 6, 1945

I wish the two leaders will issue a message of meaningful consolation.

KIM HYUN-YEThe author is a Tokyo correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo. She hurried from the early morning after hearing the news that the air raid warning was lifted. She left home, holding the hands of her two younger brothers in the fifth and third grades of elementary school.

The sky was really clear. She got on the trolley. After moving about 20 meters to the west, she heard a faint sound of an explosion. She shouted, “Hurry up and jump off the train!” A hot flame ball seemed to be approaching from somewhere.

When she came to her senses and looked around, it was dark. She couldn’t see anything. She thought it was strange how it was a dark morning again. As it became a little brighter, she began to see the front of the trolley she had been riding. The trolley car had burned down.

When it became a bit brighter, she could not believe her eyes. All the buildings on the street were destroyed. She headed back home with her two brothers, who were saved by adults who embraced them. The road was blocked by all the debris from collapsed buildings.

Going home was not easy. At 8:15 am on Aug. 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and the life of 91-year-old Park Nam-joo, then a first-year in middle school, changed completely.

Park, a second-generation Korean Japanese, was 1.9 kilometers (1.2 miles) away from where the atomic bomb fell. Black rain began to fall. The nights in Hiroshima were red for several days. Water was the last word those exposed to the radiation said at the last moment. “Even now, whenever I think of that time, I burst into tears,” Park said. “Hiroshima was a hell, a miserable and cruel hell.”

A neighbor boy in the same class and the family of Tomiko have not returned since that day. People say as a greeting, “You survived the picadon!” Picadon in Japanese means a “flash boom.” Many Koreans living in Hiroshima returned to Korea, but Park’s family stayed and fought radiation and poverty. They were searching for the uncle who did not come home. Her voice was cheerful when I talked to her on the phone. She said, “I almost jumped in joy” when she learned President Yoon Seok Yeol was invited to the Group of 7 summit in Hiroshima and will visit the memorial for the Korean victims of the atomic bombing with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

“I wanted to say that the Japanese were not the only ones who suffered from the bomb, and the leaders of the two countries will visit for the first time.” On the back side of the memorial is an engraving, “About 100,000 Koreans were living as soldiers, civilians working for the military, forced laborers, students of mobilization and ordinary citizens.” Visiting the memorial means “acknowledging it,” she said. Just as Kishida said, I hope it will be “a meaningful tribute.” I wish the two leaders will issue a message of meaningful consolation.