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A poverty-hit Japanese lorry driver who discovered that he was switched at birth from an affluent family sued the hospital involved, which has been ordered to pay him compensation of 38 million yen (US$250,000). The 2013 case has resurfaced online amid the reporting of several recent cases of Chinese children who were abducted at a young age, grew up in poor families and were reunited with their rich parents. In November 2013, a court ruled that the San-ikukai Hospital in Tokyo’s Sumida district should pay the 60-year-old 38 million yen because they made the mistake of switching him with another baby right after their birth in 1953. The truth did not emerge for six decades until the rich family’s younger sons grew unsatisfied with their elder brother’s treatment of their father. After their mother died, the elder brother reportedly held their father’s share of their mother’s heritage in return for looking after him, but instead sent him to a nursing home. The younger sons then began to notice how their elder brother did not look like them, and recalled that their late mother told them his clothes changed after a nurse gave him a bath in hospital. They collected a cigarette end their elder brother threw away and sent it for a DNA check in 2009. The results showed that he was not biologically related to them. An investigation of the hospital’s records meant the family were able to track down a lorry driver in Tokyo. It turned out that the driver was born just 13 minutes earlier than the baby he was switched with. He ended up in an adoptive family, the father of whom died when he was only two years old. He then led a poor life in a household with no electrical appliances and had to work part-time while struggling to graduate from a secondary school. He was also constantly told by his mother and neighbours that he looked like neither of his parents. Meanwhile, the baby who lived his life was well educated and became a company boss. His three younger brothers were also company elites. By the time the driver found out about his biological parents, they had both died. The judge, Masatoshi Miyasaka, said the court supported the driver’s claims because “he was separated from his biological parents almost immediately at birth and will never meet them”. The judge added that he deserved the compensation because he “should have been raised in a financially comfortable environment”. A similar case in China that went viral online involved 27-year-old Xie Qingshuai, whose biological father is a multimillionaire and who prepared him three furnished flats as a reunion gift.
