MINAMATA, Kumamoto Prefecture--In this city that has witnessed so much suffering, one man's decades-long crusade against faceless bureaucrats may yet have a happy ending.

The 73-year-old man is battling Kumamoto officials to expose bureaucratic incompetence and negligence. And he won't rest until the wrongs against his mother are put right.

The man insists his mother suffered from Minamata disease. Had bureaucrats done their jobs properly, he says, she would have been certified as a victim of the disease and received state health benefits.

His mother died in 1977, three years after applying for Minamata disease certification that would have entitled her to state-paid health benefits.

Despite his repeated pleas, 17 more years passed before prefectural authorities even bothered to contact the hospital where she was treated to obtain her medical records. By then, her medical records had disappeared. The following year, the Kumamoto prefectural government rejected the application for state benefits on grounds her ``medical records are no longer available.''

The man filed a suit in 2001 seeking to nullify the prefectural government's decision.

``I am just one man, but I am fighting for the countless other victims whose applications for recognition were rejected (due to administrative negligence),'' he said.

``The prefecture waited so long to act that, of course, her medical records were lost. And when the authorities finally rejected the application, they didn't even offer a word of apology.''

Most plaintiffs in Minamata disease litigations settled out of court following a ``political settlement'' reached in 1995 that awarded lump-sum payments to uncertified victims. The responsibility of the state and the prefectural government was left ambiguous.

Of about 800 victims who attended a meeting to vote on the proposed settlement, the man was among only four people who voted against it.

Later, persuaded by other members, the man and his 42-year-old son accepted the settlement.

But ``I could never close my eyes to my mother's case,'' he says.

Each summer, on the anniversary of his mother's death, the man would ask the prefectural government if any progress had been made on her application. Each time, he was told officials were ``still examining'' the case.

Prefectural authorities deny dragging their heels on purpose.

Now the man hopes to soon win closure as the former chief of the prefectural government's environmental pollution division is due to testify in the 12th hearing slated at the Kumamoto District Court on Nov. 12.(IHT/Asahi: October 16,2004) (10/16)