# Entitlement to the survivors of Nagasaki? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 29, 2008, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101 "2008-12-29T19:18:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![luvrbcs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@luvrbcs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/luvrbcs)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/1 "2008-12-29T19:18:26Z")
My father-in-law made a weird comment yesterday, he said that we, the US, paid a sum of money (I forget somewhat how much he said, I think it was $28,000, or such) to each survivor of the Nagasaki bombing. Now my FIL is a real A-hole so I did not call him on this for facts, but, it now has me thinking, we (the US) do a lot of funny things so maybe we did. I googled it and the only stuff I come up with with any relevance is that the Japanese government has to pay the medical care of the survivors but nothing about others paying out any amount. Is my father-in-law talking out of his ass, again? ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/2 "2008-12-29T19:31:29Z")
News to me. Can’t see why the US would be on the hook. Sovereign states cannot be judged in courts for acts of legal warfare. ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/3 "2008-12-29T19:33:14Z")
If it were true why not Hiroshima survivors also. I call BS on it ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/4 "2008-12-29T19:41:22Z")
> [@Paul in Saudi](#): > > News to me. Can’t see why the US would be on the hook. Sovereign states cannot be judged in courts for acts of legal warfare. It is just possible we did so out of the goodness of our hearts- not that there’s any evidence of that (the payment, not the goodness). ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/5 "2008-12-29T19:49:48Z")
He might be conflating it with the fact the the US Govt paid reparations to the Japanese Americans who were interned in Concentration Camps in the West Coast. ---
**Author:** ![Sanders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sanders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sanders)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/6 "2008-12-29T20:06:30Z")
Or conflating it with the [Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal](http://www.nuclearclaimstribunal.com/). ---
**Author:** ![luvrbcs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@luvrbcs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/luvrbcs)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/7 "2008-12-29T20:22:43Z")
Who knows what he means, I’ll call it BS and just let it drop. It really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Thanks for confirming. ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2008, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/8 "2008-12-29T23:45:04Z")
I wonder if the story got twisted in which money was given to the area, and some baffoon may have calculated what that would have been per individual of the area. And now you’re FIL is equating that with money actually given to individuals, but never was. Just like baffoons here do, “bailout money would equal $xxxxxx per citizen”, but never given to individual people. Maybe he’s got it twisted like that. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2008, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/entitlement-to-the-survivors-of-nagasaki/479101/9 "2008-12-30T00:37:51Z")
It may be a garbled version of the fact that some of the Japanese government’s support to the survivors was effectively through the US’s Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). The history of the Japanese compensation is rather messy, since the postwar governments didn’t exactly fall over themselves to single out the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors as needing special help and there was a long campaign to generate the political pressure to get them to do something concrete. (It was, unsurprisingly, easy for the politicians to stall by arguing that it was the US who should be paying for any support.) A law was eventually passed in 1957 that provided for two annual medical examinations of each survivor. Since the ABCC was already engaged in a programme of regular examinations (for deliberately somewhat different motives), it became convenient for the Japanese government to regard these as meeting their new requirement and pay the ABCC a fixed fee for each one. Since they were doing these examinations anyway, the US’s gesture was to use this money to fund a series of small relief efforts for needy survivors. By the end of 1964 the ABCC had received $40k from such fees and distributed $27k. But those are totals, across both cities. Still, a possible origin for a misunderstood figure of about $28k? The matter is touched on by M. Susan Lindee in her history of the ABCC, _Suffering Made Real_ (Chicago, 1994; 1997, p138-9). The US government did pay compensation for the [Lucky Dragon incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Dragon): $2 million to the Japanese government, of which about $151k was split amongst the crew and families.