Torment and taunts for Fukushima kids

remain off limits.

Aoyama too was questioned about the contagiousness of radiation, taunted and told she should just go away.

“They said such things behind my back, sometimes intentionally in loud voices so I could hear,” she said.

Asao Naito, a bullying expert at Tokyo’s Meiji University, said Japan’s education system suppresses individuality and makes children prone to pick on the different.

“So evacuees from Fukushima are preyed upon in the totalitarian environment of Japanese schools,” he said.

Extortion

A recent case in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, stirred outrage after it emerged that a boy had been extorted of $13,000 by classmates.

He was also slapped and pushed around and accused of living on government “compensation”.

He swallowed the pain for years while secretly siphoning cash from home to pay his tormentors.

Kei Hida, the family’s lawyer, said she believed the boy could not bear to open up to his family, knowing his mother had also suffered abuse from neighbors.

“Garbage was thrown at her and she received an anonymous letter telling the family to leave the neighborhood,” Hida said.

Lawyer Tomohiro Kurosawa said part of the problem is that many Japanese do not see the Fukushima evacuees as victims as nobody in authority has yet been held accountable.