Two-Sided Explosion: The Atomic Bomb that Saved Colonized Lives

“The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was one of the most devastating tragedies that ever occurred in human history,” claims Akiko Fuji, a Japanese survivor of the Hiroshima bombing in World War II.

In fact, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament also describes the bombing of Hiroshima as “representing a human tragedy which should never be repeated.”

Internationally, the atomic bomb is indeed remembered to have been a deadly incident that instantly decimated nearly 80,000 Japanese upon its landing. Nevertheless, this bomb, dropped on August 6th, 1945, and nicknamed as the “Little Boy” resulted in the end of World War 2.

The ethics of the Hiroshima bombing have been debated for decades. Pro-bomb Historians see it as a necessary evil which prevented military casualties that outweigh the lives that were lost. But peace activists claim the bombing was unnecessary, an immoral and dehumanizing act by the United States.

But one perspective often ignored here is that of the Asian peoples colonized by the imperial Japanese soldiers, occupied populations whose ancestors' stomachs were ripped open in human experimentation, or tortured or forced to work until they died from exhaustion and starvation in imperial Japanese coal mines and other slave labor activities. Those tens of millions of Asians were comforted, finally freed and ultimately saved by the atomic bombs which forced Japan to surrender and dismantle its very cruel empire.

Imagine you’re a 17 year old girl. One day you’re kidnapped, taken from your parents by Japanese soldiers who throw you into a dirty truck full of terrified girls like yourself - or even,as young as 12. They start suffering from disease, injuries and malnutrition as they become slaves in a country they don't know, have never been to. They don't speak the language but if they try to talk, they’re bound to get beaten, raped, killed or even sent away for human experimentation.

Across the Japanese empire during World War II, imperial Japanese soldiers serving in Korea took rundown shacks and made then into what they called “comfort stations” to rape more than two hundred thousand young, enslaved girls there.

This is the story of the Korean comfort women, one of many groups across Asia subject to atrocious war crimes under the japanese imperial control. Before the war in 1937 in China, more than 20,000 Chinese women and children were raped in Nanking alone. Along with Korean comfort women, rape and forced prostitution of more than 20,000 women was discovered at the war's end by Allied troops liberating Japanese occupied New Guinea, Java and Tawian, In Indonesia, 400 European into military brothels.

The distinctly Asian perspective on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is rarely discussed in American schools, but it must be acknowledged, remembered and, yes, respected whenever we as Americans discuss and debate what happened in Japan in the August 1945 bombing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were undeniable tragedies for the residents of these cities but those atomic bombs rang bells of liberty across occupied Asia.

The next time that you think Hiroshima and Nagasaki, please also consider those women in my extended family in Korea who in the war were forced to become Japanese army sex slaves - and were liberated, finally, by American army bombs.

Even in 2021 the Japanese government refuses to acknowledge the truth of the Korean comfort women. After the war, Japan has become a strong, powerful, and technologically advanced country with a successful economy, but yet Japan has not accepted or even, admitted, its own horrible history. The elderly Korean women who are still alive today and who were comfort women still wait to be acknowledged by Japan.

The perspective of my people is usually ignored in this part of history. The residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki deserved our sympathies for their suffering - but so did everyone across Japanese occupied Asia. Two bombs liberated a continent, including my people. Americans have the luxury of forgetting this fact - we, across Asia, do not.

By Suhh Yeon Kim, Editor-in-Chief