Court Partly Recognizes as Hibakusha

Nagasaki District Court decided fifteen people who “experienced” atomic bombing in Nagasaki in 1945 should be included in hibakusha, recognizing them as sufferers of the black rain, and ordered the local governments to issue the hibakusha health notebook to them. The decision was made on the people who were outside the government-designated area. However, request of other twenty-nine plaintiffs was dismissed as insufficient.

After the World War II, the government of Japan has been demanded compensation and healthcare by the sufferers of atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The government set designated area in central Hiroshima and Nagasaki and recognized the people who had been in the area as hibakusha in 1957. In 2002, it started certain support for the people outside the area in Nagasaki, calling them “A-bomb experienced people.”

 

Those people filed a lawsuit seeking further assistance for their health in 2007. If they were included in hibakusha, they would have free medical treatment. Hibakusha health notebook is a passport for it. But the Supreme Court excluded the people outside the designated area from hibakusha in 2017. They filed again in 2018.

 

Nagasaki District Court found that the black rain, which is known as radioactive and harmful for human body, fell certain area outside the designated area, based on a survey conducted by the city of Nagasaki in 1999. However, the court excluded other area, because the plaintiffs could not show evidence of the black rain on their area.

 

In a decision in Hiroshima District Court in 2021, hibakusha was defined as the people who were even outside of the designated area, when suffering from radiation would not be denied. But Nagasaki court demanded hard evidence of falling of black rain and chemical evidence of its poisonousness. Nagasaki court also denied any evidence which would prove that the ashes fallen on the area actually contained radiation.

 

For the plaintiffs, the decision of Nagasaki court was a retreat from Hiroshima decision in 2021. “The decision was totally irrational and discriminatory. We would never back down,” said one of the plaintiffs. One of the lawyers for the plaintiffs told that the decision was malicious aiming at introducing division among the sufferers, not looking at the reality of hibakusha.

 

After the decision of Hiroshima in 2021, the government of Japan started relief for hibakusha. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who was elected from an electoral district in Hiroshima, ordered Minister of Health to solve the issue in a rational way as soon as possible. But decision of Nagasaki court denied “rationality” of including sufferers outside the area of black rain, even if they had experienced ashes or internal exposure to radiation.

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