Bereaved family members from Hiroshima Prefecture arrive for a national memorial ceremony for the war dead at Nippon Budokan Martial Arts Hall in Tokyo on August 15, 2019
The Hiroshima District Court said all 84 plaintiffs who were outside of a zone previously set by the government where radioactive rain fell also developed radiation-induced illnesses and should be certified as atomic bomb victims. All of the plaintiffs are older than their late 70s, with some in their 90s.The US dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing 140,000 people and almost destroying the entire city.
In Wednesday's ruling, the court said the plaintiffs' argument about their black rain exposure was reasonable and that their medical records showed they have health problems linked to radiation exposure. Osamu Saito, a doctor who has examined atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima, welcomed the ruling for considering the survivors' welfare based on an assumption that anyone who was in these areas and hit by the rain could have been affected by radiation.