HIROSHIMA, Japan, Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Japan was ordered Wednesday by the Hiroshima High Court to pay $465,000 to 40 South Korean slave workers affected by the 1945 atomic bomb blast.
The ruling was a reversal of a lower court ruling, and said the Japanese government is liable to financially support A-bomb survivors even if they are abroad, saying a 1974 decree by the former Health and Welfare Ministry limiting the range of survivors eligible for support to only those living in Japan is against the law.
The Kyodo news agency said the plaintiffs had originally demanded a total of $4 million from the state and Mitsubishi for being forced to work at a Mitsubishi factory in Hiroshima and for being exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb dropped Aug. 6, 1945.
About 2,800 people from South Korea were forced to work in Hiroshima, many of them suffering from the atomic bombing.
Forced laborers from the Korean Peninsula, which Japan ruled as a colony, generally have not been successful in Japanese courts compared with forced laborers from China, the report said.
