Dozens of relatives of former Dutch prisoners of war who died, suffered abuses and starvation while being held in one of Japan's largest wartime prison camps in Nagasaki, gathered at a former campsite on Saturday to pay tribute to their loved ones.

Representatives from both sides - Japan and the Netherlands - attended the ceremony held in front of a stone monument for the victims of the Fukuoka POW Camp No. 2, which was erected in 2015 with contributions led by Japanese survivors of the Nagasaki atomic bombing and their descendants as a symbol of reconciliation and peace.

"By reflecting on how this memorial came into being, it also stands as a symbol of reconciliation between those whose ancestors were once enemies," Andre Schram, a representative of Dutch bereaved families, said at the ceremony. 

His father Johan Willem Schram, a Dutch Navy officer, survived the hardship at the No. 2 camp and forced labour in the last three years of the war and the Aug. 9 Atomic bombing just a week before Japan's surrender. 

Schram published a history booklet about the Netherlands' colonial rule of the Dutch East Indies, the war with Japan and aftermath of WWII based on a story of his father.

The elder Schram was one of about 500 POWs at the No. 2 Camp. 

The majority of them were Dutch but there were others from America, Britain and Australia.

Though nobody was directly killed by the atomic bomb, more than 70 of them had died of malnutrition, overwork and illnesses by then.

The United States dropped a plutonium bomb on the southwestern city of Nagasaki at 11.02 a.m. on Aug. 9, 1945, killing more than 70,000 people by the end of that year. 

The attack came only three days after the U.S. dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, destroying the city and killing 140,000 others.

Japan announced its surrender on Aug. 15, ending World War II and the country’s nearly half-century of aggression in Asia.

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, it is said that the prisoners at the No. 2 Camp, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the hypocentre, saw a huge orange fireball, purple smoke and the mushroom cloud in the direction of the Nagasaki city. 

Windows were shattered, doors fell and the ceiling of a clinic at the camp collapsed, injuring about 10 prisoners, historians say.

At the other camp, No. 14, which was closer to ground zero, the brick buildings at the camp were destroyed, leaving eight dead and injuring dozens more. 

Prisoners at the less damaged No. 2 camp provided rice and other relief goods for their fellow prisoners at the destroyed camp. 

The POWs were not informed of Japan's surrender until Aug. 19.

Kazuhiro Ihara, Secretary General of the Committee for the Maintenance of the Memorial at Fukuoka Prisoner of War Camp No. 2 and No. 14, led this year's ceremony.

"We have been organising this event with the hope that it will be a step towards world peace," he told The Associated Press. 

AP Video by Mayuko Ono

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