 High court orders government damages to Korean Hibakusha In a landmark ruling, the Hiroshima High Court on January 19 overturned a lower court decision and ordered the government to pay 48 million yen in reparation to Koreans who were exposed to radiation from the atomic bombing in 1945 while they were working in Hiroshima as forced laborers. This is the first high court ruling that ordered state damages to A-bomb survivors (Hibakusha) living outside of Japan on the grounds that it has failed to apply the national Hibakusha aid law to these Korean Hibakusha. The 40 plaintiffs were forcibly brought to Japan from the Korean Peninsula during WW II to work at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., in Hiroshima City. They demanded that the government and the company pay them a total of 440 million yen (11 million yen each) in damages and as unpaid wages. Although the court ordered the government to pay 1.2 million yen to each of the plaintiffs, it rejected their demand for compensation from the company on the grounds that the statute of limitations expired. Judge Nishijima Yukio referred to the decision of the Osaka High Court in 2000 in a lawsuit filed by a Hibakusha living in South Korea stating that irrespective of where they live, Hibakusha must be recognized as Hibakusha. He ruled that it is unconstitutional that the Health and Welfare Ministry issued a directive in 1974 to disqualify Hibakusha living outside of Japan from receiving medical allowances. In 1999, the Hiroshima District Court stated that the government does not have responsibility for events that occurred under the prewar Constitution. At a rally after the ruling, the plaintiffs' lawyer Zaima Hidekazu said, "It is a landmark ruling that we did not expect." (end) |