Staff Writer, with CNA
The Japanese government has agreed to compensate Taiwanese nationals who survived the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.
Representatives of 18 Taiwanese survivors had filed a class action suit against Japan, seeking compensation for the trauma and damage survivors suffered during the bombings by the US.
The bombs killed 180,000 people and left 580,000 physically injured or mentally scarred.
The Japanese government reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement on Monday with 10 of the 18 Taiwanese survivors, agreeing to pay them compensation of ￥1.1 million (US$13,120) each.
Survivors from five other countries, including South Korea, Brazil and Australia, had already received similar compensation.
One of the 10 Taiwanese survivors is Wang Wen-chi (王文其), a retired medical doctor from Chiayi who is now 95 years old and in good health.
Wang was working as an intern at a university hospital in Japan on Aug. 9, 1945, when the US dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, before three days later bombing Hiroshima.
Wang’s response to news of the compensation decision was lukewarm.
“Wars are terrible and people should try to avoid them,” he said to a group of Japanese who visited him yesterday.
He was given a health handbook issued by the Japanese government to atomic bomb survivors a couple of years ago, which entitles him to one free medical checkup a year in Japan and a monthly food stipend of about NT$9,000.
Wang’s son, Wang Po-tung (王柏東), who is a dentist, said his family had earlier applied for the benefit, but the request was rejected because his father had produced no medical documents to show that he was a bomb survivor.
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