Ministry officially recognizes woman as A-bomb victim
TOKYO, Aug. 2 Kyodo - The Health and Welfare Ministry has officially recognized a 58-year-old woman as a victim of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, making her eligible for a special medical allowance, city officials said Wednesday.
The city received from the ministry on Wednesday a certificate for A-bomb victims in the name of Hideko Matsuya, dated July 31, the officials said. The city will hand the certificate to Matsuya on Thursday, they said.
The ministry's move follows a July 18 ruling by the Supreme Court upholding a lower court order for the state to officially recognize Matsuya as a victim.
The decision was the first by the Supreme Court over the certification of A-bomb victims. The ruling is expected to make the ministry review the standards by which it officially recognizes people as suffering from the effects of radiation from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Matsuya is now eligible for a medical allowance of 139,600 yen per month. She will also get back payments of the allowance for the period from February 1987, when she applied for the certificate, the officials said.
Matsuya was in the garden of her home, some 2.45 kilometers away from ground zero, when the bomb exploded Aug. 9, 1945, and she was paralyzed down the right side of her body through the combined effects of her exposure to a large amount of radiation and being hit in the head by a flying piece of tile.
Matsuya was 3 years old at the time of the bombing, which killed some 40,000 people and followed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier.
The health ministry twice rejected her application for the special allowance, claiming her ailments were not related to radiation from the bombing.
She filed a suit with the Nagasaki District Court against the health minister in 1988, demanding the ministry change its decision.
The district court ruled in her favor in 1993
Courts nationwide are currently handling three similar cases.
As of the end of March this year, 2,166 people were certified as suffering from the effects of the atomic bombing, according to the ministry.
==Kyodo
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