About 30 lawmakers from the ruling and opposition camps organized a suprapartisan Diet group Thursday to help survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who live outside Japan.
The group said that it will work to help survivors in other countries receive financial support from Japan. Domestic laws do not cover the estimated 6,000 survivors of the atomic bombing who live in South and North Korea, the United States, Brazil and elsewhere.
Even Japanese are not covered by the law unless they live in their homeland.
An aide to House of Representatives member Tetsuo Kaneko, 52, from the Social Democratic Party, said, "Some Japanese lawmakers are not familiar with the issue. Our first task will be to make them aware of it."
The leading organizers are from six parties -- the ruling coalition's Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, and from the opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan, the Japanese Communist Party, the Liberal Party and the SDP.