A high court in on Thursday upheld a lower court decision ordering the central government to pay damages to residents for aircraft noise from a U.S. Marine Corps base in the prefecture.
In Thursday’s , the Fukuoka High Court’s Naha branch ordered the central government to pay around 950 million yen ($8.3 million), according to lawyers representing plaintiffs in the case.
The amount was larger than the around 754 million yen in damages originally awarded by a district court.
In June last year, the branch of the Naha District Court acknowledged that residents living around Air Station in Ginowan suffered mental distress due to aircraft noise from the base located in a densely populated residential area.
In the lawsuit, around 2,200 plaintiffs sought about 1 billion yen in damages from the central government, saying aircraft noise had disrupted their sleep and daily lives. The district court ordered the government to pay the damages to around 2,100 of the plaintiffs.
Both the plaintiffs and the government had appealed the .
The plaintiffs are not involved in a separate lawsuit filed by 3,395 residents seeking compensation for aircraft noise at the base and demanding that flights be suspended.
Last month, the district court ordered the central government to pay around 2.46 billion yen in damages to the residents but rejected their demand for a halt to flights at the base. The defendants and the government have since appealed the .
==Kyodo
This is funny…I don’t recall reading that any Okinawans complained when we saved their asses from thousands of Japanese invaders in April and May, 1945.