Hiroshima Survivors Tell Tales of the Atomic Bomb They Want the World to Remember

Now, Kondo is following in her father’s footsteps, busy telling her stories to younger people.

Hiroshima has become a beautiful place, but atomic bombs still exist, she says, and another nuclear attack would destroy the world.

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Lee Jong-Keun, 92

Lee kept his secret as an atomic bombing survivor for nearly 70 years, not even telling his wife, always fearing people might notice the burn marks on the face.

But today Lee, a second-generation Korean born in Japan, is training young people to tell survivors' stories. He also wants them to learn about the difficulty that Koreans have faced in Japan.

“Survivors won't be here 20 years from now, but our stories must be,” said Lee, who will meet Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after Thursday's memorial to demand Japan do more to ban nuclear weapons.

Some 20,000 ethnic Korean residents of Hiroshima are believed to have died in the nuclear attack.

The city had a large number of Korean workers, including those forced to work without pay at mines and factories under Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

At a memorial Wednesday for Korean victims, Lee laid flowers and prayed for those who perished.