HAPCHEON — Bae Kyung-mi was five years old when the Americans dropped “Little Boy”, the atomic bomb that flattened Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Like thousands of other ethnic Koreans working in the city at the time, her family kept the horror a secret.

Many feared the stigma from doing menial work for colonial ruler Japan, and false rumours that radiation sickness was contagious.

Bae recalls hearing planes overhead while she was playing at her home in Hiroshima on that day. 

Within minutes, she was buried in rubble.

“I told my mom in Japanese, ‘Mom! There are airplanes!’“ Bae, now 85, told AFP.

She passed out shortly after.

Her home collapsed on top of her, but the debris shielded her from the burns that killed tens of thousands of people — including her aunt and uncle.

After the family moved back to Korea, they did not speak of their experience.

“I never told my husband that I was in Hiroshima and a victim of the bombing,” Bae said.

“Back then, people often said you had married the wrong person if he or she was an atomic bombing survivor.” 

Her two sons only learned she had been in Hiroshima when she registered at a special centre set up in 1996 in Hapcheon in South Korea for victims of the bombings, she said.

Bae said she feared her children would suffer from radiation-related illnesses that afflicted her, forcing her to have her ovaries and a breast removed because of the high cancer risk.