Voices of the Unredressed: Korean and Nisei A-Bomb Survivors, Structural Legacies of Violence, and Compensatory Justice in the Cold War Pacific

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay explores the historical erasures of Korean and U.S.-born Japanese American (Nisei) survivors of the 1945 atomic bombing. Since 1945, the Korean survivors of Hiroshima have struggled for redress as South Korea has remained a crucial part of the U.S. Cold War nuclear umbrella. As American civilians, the Nisei atomic bomb survivors have also found themselves unrecognized by their country as victims of the U.S. nuclear violence. The struggles of Korean and Nisei A-bomb survivors for historical recognition reveal the colonial, racial, and state violence that remain unredressed in the U.S. “empire for liberty” well into the twenty-first century.