Around 6,000 people will sue the government next month to demand a halt to nighttime and early morning flights at Atsugi air base near Tokyo and seek compensation for noise pollution, their lawyer said Saturday.
The would-be plaintiffs in the suit, to be filed at the Yokohama District Court on Aug. 4, are mostly people who live nearby. They might be joined by 2,000 to 3,000 others in the fall or later, which would bring the total number of plaintiffs in the case to around 10,000, the lawyer said.
"Our lives are disrupted and are even put at risk whenever we are hit with booming noise (from aircraft) overhead. We will never accept the reality of the Atsugi base-related flights," Shuji Onami, the would-be plaintiffs' leader, said at a meeting in Yamato, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Saturday.