The Japanese government is set to use a Civil Code technicality to fight the bereaved families of some 600 overseas atomic bombing survivors in court over their claim that excluding those living outside Japan from the A-bomb survivors' relief law was illegal, it has been learned.

The move comes even after the government suggested as recently as last year that it would work to settle the class-action suits.

A-bomb survivors, or hibakusha, are eligible for payments from the Japanese government including a health management allowance (roughly 34,000 yen per month) based on the Atomic Bomb Survivors' Assistance Act. In 1974, the then health ministry sent out a notice that the A-bomb survivor allowances would not be provided to those who moved out of the country. As a result, hibakusha living outside Japan were not eligible for such payments until 2003, when the health ministry notice was scrapped.

In a lawsuit filed by a group of 40 South Korean hibakusha who experienced the Hiroshima atomic bombing, the Supreme Court in 2007 upheld a Hiroshima High Court decision which declared that the state's policy of refusing coverage to A-bomb survivors living overseas was illegal. The ruling ordered the government to pay 1.2 million yen to each of the plaintiffs in compensation.

In 2008, then Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe announced the government would move forward with compensating overseas A-bomb survivors, saying that the state was willing to settle the cases according to the court rulings. A series of lawsuits followed in the Osaka, Hiroshima and Nagasaki district courts, and by the end of September this year the government had settled cases covering some 6,000 plaintiffs.

However, the government began to claim that of about 930 plaintiffs still in court proceedings, some 600 who are family members of deceased A-bomb survivors and who filed their cases against the government 20 years after the survivors' deaths or later did not have right to claim compensation. The state's assertion is based on a Civil Code "exclusion period" stipulation that says the right to claim compensation expires 20 years after the illegal conduct takes place. The government argues that the illegal conduct -- the state's decision to exclude hibakusha living outside Japan from A-bomb survivors' assistance law benefits -- ended when the survivors in question died.

Among the bereaved families that the government has already settled with, there are 175 people whose A-bomb relatives passed away 20 years or more ago. However, the state says it only noticed the exclusion period in civil cases in spring of last year. The bereaved family members are objecting to the Japanese government's move, saying that it is extremely unjust for the state to escape its responsibility to compensate A-bomb survivors.