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Minamata's poisoned sea
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In the mid-1950s, fisherfolk living around Minamata, a town in south Kumamoto Prefecture, began suffering from a mysterious disease. The illness attacked the nervous system, causing convulsions, loss of speech and hearing, often severe mental disability and an agonizing death. The first case of what came to be known as
Minamata disease
was officially diagnosed in 1956, but it took another three years to identify the cause as organic mercury poisoning and it was nearly another decade before Chisso, a local chemical company, stopped pumping their mercury-laden waste into the sea.
The victims, aided by a local teacher, Ishimure Michiko , battled for years against the local authorities, the company and the national government to win recognition of their suffering and adequate compensation. Eventually, a number of families took the company to court in 1969, by which time a nationwide support movement had evolved. Four years later, Chisso was finally judged liable - too late for many, of course. To date, although the government recently declared the bay mercury-free, nearly 2000 people have died of Minamata disease, while around 13,000 have been certified as afflicted and eligible for compensation. Though the true extent of the tragedy will never be known, some estimates put the total number of people affected as high as 100,000 Other useful information
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Japan,
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