Surgery in junior high school and high school “Everything has changed”, high school senior 6-year-old at the time of the nuclear power plant accident, 2nd oral argument in the Fukushima children’s thyroid cancer lawsuit
September 7, 2022
On September 7, the second round of oral arguments was held at the Tokyo District Court (Saburo Sakamoto presiding) in a lawsuit filed by six men and women, ages 17-28, who were minors and living in Fukushima Prefecture at the time of the accident, seeking a total of 616 million yen in damages from TEPCO for thyroid cancer caused by exposure to radiation from the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. A 17-year-old girl, a junior in high school in the prefecture, who was 6 years old at the time of the accident, gave her statement, saying tearfully, “Everything has changed before I had a clear idea about myself, my character, and my dreams for the future. (Natsuko Katayama)
She sat on the witness stand for about 15 minutes with a screen placed so that the audience could not see her, her voice shaking as she shared her thoughts and feelings. At the time of the accident, she was in kindergarten and living in the Hamadori area in the eastern part of the prefecture. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was in junior high school and underwent surgery at the age of 13. She thought she was fine, but the cancer returned last fall. She underwent surgery again and underwent painful radiation treatment.
I don’t really know what I want to do in the future. I just want to become a financially stable civil servant. I don’t think love, marriage, or childbirth have anything to do with me. The woman burst into tears and choked on her words several times. “High school life is not a place to enjoy youth, but rather a place to receive college recommendations for a stable future. Even so, there are times when I cannot sleep because I am anxious about the future,” she said.
◆A woman who was in the 6th grade also filed an additional lawsuit
On the same day, a woman in her 20s from the Nakadori area in the central part of the prefecture, who was in the sixth grade at the time of the accident, filed an additional lawsuit. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last summer and underwent surgery. She said that she decided to file the lawsuit because “there are other people suffering in addition to me.
TEPCO is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, claiming that there is no causal relationship between the plaintiffs’ cancer and the nuclear accident.
https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/200686?fbclid=IwAR3XPPG3p-NLHg0w9rahtOwIVvCFlfo55sxyFC3yZQOqrXQIpjRBqVb-v0M
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