After Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Global Antinuclear Rallies and Japanese Grassroots Campaigns to Redress North Korean A-Bomb Victims

This paper examines the grassroots campaign, waged by activists in Japan, to redress the grievances of thousands of A-bomb victims residing in North Korea. These victims were repatriated from Japan in the post-war era after being subjected to the 1945 US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while under colonial rule. In the absence of diplomatic relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo, they had limited recourse to claim the benefits they were entitled to under the Japanese government’s A-Bomb Survivors Relief Law. Japan-based activists of Korean and Japanese ethnicities began forging connections with these North Korean victims in the early Cold War. This process was facilitated by developments in the North Korean government’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, which (somewhat ironically) rendered the regime more permeable to the interests and efforts of international anti-nuclear activists. Indeed, most of the activists concerned had hitherto been vocal at global anti-nuclear rallies in their denunciation of the 1945 US nuclear attacks. This paper draws on interviews with these Japan-based activists in addition to archived newspaper articles to trace the history of their redress campaign. It examines their attempts to document the plight of the victims through photography and film and fact-finding missions, and to spur official action on their behalf. The paper thus illuminates neglected historical chapters in Japan-North Korea relations and global nuclear history.