Japan court orders state to pay compensation to A-bomb victims’ kin abroad

A Japanese court on Jan 28 ordered the state to pay damages to the bereaved relatives of victims originally from the Korean Peninsula who were exposed to 1945 US atomic bombing in Hiroshima.

The Hiroshima District Court awarded the full amount of 3.3 million yen (S$27,250) demanded by 23 family members of three deceased atomic bombing victims residing in South Korea, rejecting the state’s argument that the statute of limitations applied.

The state’s claim to drop their request “is not acceptable, as it constitutes abuse of rights”, Presiding Judge Atsushi Yamaguchi said in handing down the ruling.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that the Japanese government should compensate them for failing to provide healthcare allowances to atomic bomb survivors over an extended period after their return to South Korea.

Citing the statute of limitations under the Civil Code, the state argued that relatives could no longer seek redress from Tokyo because more than 20 years had passed since the victims’ deaths by the time the lawsuit was first filed in June 2023.

Under Japan’s Atomic Bomb Survivors Support Law, atomic bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, are eligible for reimbursement of medical expenses and other fees. However, hibakusha living abroad were excluded from redress in 1974 due to an instruction by the health and welfare ministry at the time.

But after a court decision that the exclusion was illegal, the ministry scrapped the notification in March 2003 and began providing allowances to survivors abroad.

In 2007, the Supreme Court also finalised its decision that the ministry’s instruction was illegal and that the government was liable for paying compensation to overseas atomic bomb survivors. KYODO NEWS