(August 5, 1999, The Chugoku Shimbun)

By August 4th, Hiroshima City recently discovered the names of 1,000 additional victims of the A-bomb, who died before the end of 1945, the year of the bombing. The city plans to include this fact in the report titled "Actual Status Survey of Atomic Bomb Survivors". In this year's survey, the A-bomb inquiry section of the municipal government investigated about 30,000 people, whose names were written in application forms for granting a special funeral (100,000 yen). The applications forms were requested by the bereaved families of A-bomb victims, from 1995 to 1997 as part of the "A-bomb Victims Relief Law". This revealed many unfamiliar names, that previously remained in obscurity.

The first term of the "Actual Status Survey of Atomic Bomb Survivors" started in 1979. It was identifying, one-by-one, the names of the survivors and the places they were at the time of the bombing, using the computer. This survey was also focused on tracing back persons, who died in 1945, whose direct causes of death were more likely the A-bomb. The survey sums up the data every 3 or 4 years and this year's survey marks the 6 term since the last survey, conducted in 1995. According to the investigation conducted so far, the number of identified victims, who died by the end of 1945, is about 88,800. However, the official estimate is about 140,000 (plus or minus 10,000), which was released in the document submitted to the UN in 1988. There is a gap between this official estimation and the survey's estimation with the names, by approximately 50,000.

Including the living, the survey reports about 19,000 newly identified victims to be added to the total from 1945. The A-bomb inquiry Section of the municipal government said, "The application forms for the special funeral granting to the A-bomb victims, paved the way for the survey." In the next survey, they will research on the rest of 13,000 application forms, which are kept by the municipal government. The total number of the A-bomb victims in Hiroshima reached about 541,000. The municipal government will urge the final statistics and announce the result within this month.