Changing Definition of Hibakusha

What is the definition of hibakusha? The answer may be changed after long dispute between the people and the government of Japan. The government has been recognizing the people who had been within the governmentally designated area as suffered from the atomic bombs. The people, who had been outside of the area, were appealing that they had also affected by radiation effused from the bombs. A regional court in Nagasaki found for the first time on Monday that ten people outside the area also had to be included in hibakusha.

After the World War II, Japanese government started applying supportive policy to sufferers of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Atomic Bomb Medical Care Act was legislated in 1957, the government limited the area with affection of radiation within five kilometers from the point of bomb explosion in Nagasaki. But, with executive reasons, whole City of Nagasaki was designated as the suffered area. The area eventually broadened to some neighbor towns.

Drawing the line of suffered area made a great difference between hibakusha and non-hibakusha. Hibakushas were registered as victims of national war policy. When they showed “hibakusya notebook,” they could continuously receive medical care. But, non-hibakusha did not have the notebook, left behind of national support. They had to live their lives with constant fear of sudden appearance of atomic bomb diseases mainly represented by cancer.

After the defeat of first lawsuits in 2007 and 2008, the plaintiffs submitted opinion of MD. Koya Honda, who calculated hibakusha’s exposition to radiation based on the data obtained by Manhattan District Commission of United States Army for measurement of remaining radiation. Fortunately for “non-hibakusha,” the severe accident in First Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 caused broad discussion over influence of radiation to human body.

Nagasaki District Court decided that the government had to issue hibakusha notebook to ten people out of the designated radioactive area. Based on a research of World Health Organization that indicated influence of radiation on the level of annual 25 mSv to children in Fukushima, the court recognized that those ten people could be affected by radiation from atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

Japanese government has strictly been reluctant to support non-hibakusha, because they thought once the suffered area had been broadened, a great number of people would be rushing to the government demanding medical or financial support. There is no difference, however, between psychological pains of hibakusha and non-hibakusha. Rest of non-hibakushas require sincere salvage for all of them.