Fukushima District Court ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company to pay ¥15.2 million to the family of an 102-year-old man who had killed himself with disappointment being forced leaving his house after severe accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. While the defendant argued that the suicide had not been caused by evacuation, the court recognized unbearable mental damage brought by the predictable accident. The first case of compensation for the sufferer’s suicide has realized great responsibility of an owner of nuclear reactors.
Fumio Okubo was born in Iitate village, Fukushima, where a certain amount of radioactive materials was brought blown in the wind from exploded First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. A month later, April 11th in 2011, Okubo realized that he had to evacuate from his house through a news report and told his daughter-in-law that he was unwilling to evacuate and felt like having lived too long. He was found dead next morning. His family wondered why a man who lived for 102 years had to die in a way like that.
The court defined Okubo’s life in Iitate as his whole life itself, being engaged agriculture with his parents, married with his wife having eight children and their grandchildren, and involved in close communication with neighbors. Considering long influence of cesium 137, which would take 30 years for halving its radiation, the court assumed that his pain had been unbearable with no hope to get back his home in the rest of his life and caused committing suicide.
The significance of the court decision was recognition of responsibility of TEPCO. “It was predictable for TEPCO that once the nuclear accident would occur, the residents around the plant had to evacuate for a long time and some would commit suicide,” the court determined. While Okubo had stress from his second son who had suffered from cancer, the court found that nuclear accident contributed 60% of his death.
Fukushima District Court has issued a decision of recognizing 80% of responsibility for a woman who killed herself in her evacuation and 60% for a man with diabetes having committed suicide. Okubo’s case became the first one in which the victim had not been in evacuation yet. It showed insufficiency of TEPCO’s compensation for various damage it gave the region around its broken nuclear power plant. Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare recognizes 97 suicides related to East Japan Great Earthquake or the accident in Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant by 2017. The number is still increasing.
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