Tepco apologizes to family of 102-year-old man who committed suicide amid nuclear crisis

Apr 06, 2018 | News On Japan

Apr 06, 2018 (Japan Times) - Officials of the operator of the crippled Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant apologized Thursday to the family of a 102-year-old man who killed himself in the face of an evacuation order amid the 2011 nuclear crisis.

The apology was issued after a court recognized the causal relationship between the suicide and the nuclear disaster and ordered Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (Tepco) to pay damages to the family.

â€œWe are tormented by the fact that your father, who was doing really well for his age of over 100, was forced to make that painful decision,â€ Michitaka Kondo, a senior official at Tepcoâ€™s Fukushima main office said at the familyâ€™s residence.

Fumio Okubo was found to have hanged himself at his home in the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, on April 12, 2011, about a month after the quake and tsunami disaster triggered the nuclear accident, and a day after he learned the government was going to issue the evacuation order to the village.

Mieko Okubo, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit and the 65-year-old wife of Okuboâ€™s second-eldest son, said the familyâ€™s â€œwish was fulfilledâ€ by the apology. She added that the family would now like to live peacefully.

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