The Sendai High Court on May 28 recognized two more people as sufferers of radiation illnesses caused by the August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The Osaka High Court followed suit May 30 by recognizing nine others as sufferers of illnesses caused by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.
Although both rulings denied state compensation to the plaintiffs, they represent the seventh and eighth straight defeat for the government in court battles over state certification of victims of atomic bomb-related illnesses. The government should respect the rulings and widen the scope for recognizing sufferers.
The ruling came after the government in April relaxed conditions for recognizing atomic bomb disease sufferers. In the past, the government used the probability-of-causation formula, which determined disease risk based on the estimated amount of radiation exposure — calculated by taking into account the distance a survivor was from ground zero plus other factors.