Post-war Compensation Continues

Osaka District Court on Thursday ordered Osaka Prefectural Government to dismiss the rejection to pay for medical cost of three Koreans in their treatment of diseases stemmed from a nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima sixty-eight years ago. The point of the judgment was that the law for supporting sufferers of atomic bombs, or hibakusha, allowed them to have medical treatment in overseas, if there would be an inevitable reason. With this decision, hibakushas in overseas may charge medical cost to the government of Japan. Japan still needs to settle the problems in wartime.

Governmental support for hibakusha in overseas has a long history. The system started in 1957, when Atomic Bomb Medication Act was activated, with issuance of notebooks to sufferers of the bomb. Although the government of Japan decided in 1974 that foreign hibakusha who went out of Japan would not be eligible for governmental compensation, they resumed the right after Osaka High Court recognized Koreans eligible in 2002. However, they would not be covered for medical cares, because medical fee in overseas was generally too expensive.

Plaintiffs of current case were three hibakushas who had been lived in South Korea. Their mothers were exposed atomic bomb in Hiroshima when they were in the status of fetus. They got back to South Korea after the end of war, but were under medical treatment for hepatic cancer or kidney disease from 2006 to 2010. To the government of Osaka Prefecture, they requested payment for ¥1.5 million, which was rejected. The Osaka District Court denied their request for the compensation, while it acknowledged their status of eligibility.

The basic problem of this issue is discrimination. The government has been taking a position that all sufferers of atomic bomb would be treated equally, regardless the place they were living. There were a number of foreign people, including Koreans, in wartime Japan, supposedly caused by Japan’s expansionism at the time.

There would be an objection that it was not discrimination, but fiscal requirement, that made the government difficult in covering all hibakushas. However, post-war Japan has been trying to reason everything in terms of money, not justice. Side effects of economic growth, including air and water pollution or urban diseases, were left behind, for example. Leaving those problems behind may cause discrimination to socially weaker people.

What the government must do is actively tackling the post-war problems, and to take next steps to end “post-war” status of Japan. It needs to make positive efforts by politics, which are not expectable in current government with extremely positive attitude for growth.