TOKYO ( Associated Press) — A Japanese court has dismissed a lawsuit by Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors seeking public assistance to pay their medical bills, saying the hereditary effects of radiation exposure are uncertain.
Twenty-eight people whose parents had suffered from radioactivity released by the bomb dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945, sued the Japanese government, seeking to be included in the medical care available to survivors.
The Hiroshima District Court said it could not rule out the possibility of hereditary effects of radiation, but clarified that there was no scientific consensus and that excluding them from the group receiving financial aid was not unconstitutional.
The government has insisted that there is no conclusive evidence of hereditary effects of radiation from the atomic bomb.
In a lawsuit filed in 2017, the children of the survivors sought 100,000 yen ($760) in damages, claiming their exclusion violated their constitutional right to equality.
A similar demand from his comrades in Nagasaki in December was also rejected.
The atomic bomb in Hiroshima destroyed the city and killed 140,000 people. The United States dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later, killing a further 700,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending World War II and half a century of aggression in Asia.
Many bomb survivors have chronic injuries or illnesses from the resulting radiation blasts, and have been victims of discrimination in Japan.
Their children, known as “hibaku nishi” or second-generation survivors, say they live in fear that they have inherited the ill effects of the bombs, and many suffer various kinds of injuries. Has got cancer or other diseases.
