Nagasaki has offered 190,000 yen (1,800 dollars) to the family of each atomic bomb survivor but refused to pay the widow of Choi Gye-Chol, who died in July last year in Busan at the age of 78, because he died outside Japan.

It was the first case to be decided by a high court related to funeral allowances for atomic bomb survivors who die abroad.

Nagasaki city officials had argued it was too hard to assess the authenticity of foreign death certificates.

In March a district court rejected the argument, saying difficulty verifying death certificates was not a valid reason for rejecting all applications from atomic bomb survivors who live abroad.

The case went to the Fukuoka High Court after an appeal by the Nagasaki city government, but presiding Judge Koji Ishii dismissed the appeal.

The mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Ito, issued a comment afterwards saying the local authority would decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court in consultation with the central government.

After the high court ruling, the government's main spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda, told reporters Japan needed to rethink its treatment of foreign victims of the 1945 bombings.

"It is important to explore the way to promote the convenience of the atomic bomb survivors abroad," he said.

"I would like relevant ministries, especially foreign ministry and health ministry, to take the high court ruling seriously and think hard," he said.

Some 4,500 survivors of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki live outside Japan, most of them ethnic Koreans including people who were brought to Japan as laborers.

The Japanese government decided in 2001 to extend support to aging survivors living outside the country as many lacked access to medical services available to others inside Japan.

The bombing of Hiroshima killed about 140,000 people, almost half the city, either immediately or in the months that followed from radiation injuries or horrific burns. The Nagasaki bombing killed another 70,000 people.

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