Old family photos of the lorry driver as a young child. It was six decades before he found out the truth about his life. Photo: Handout

TOKYO, Oct 28: In a story that sounds like the plot of a tragic film, a poverty-stricken Japanese truck driver spent six decades living a life that was never meant to be his. Only in his sixties did he discover the truth — that a fateful mistake at a Tokyo hospital in 1953 had stolen from him the wealth, education, and comfort that should have been his by birth.

Now, the hospital responsible has been ordered to pay him 38 million yen (about US$250,000) in compensation — a small sum for a life rewritten by error.

An investigation of decades-old hospital documents helped reveal who the lorry driver really is. Photo: Handout

The story began at the San-Ikukai Hospital in Tokyo’s Sumida district, where two boys were born just 13 minutes apart. Somewhere between the cries of newborns and the bustle of nurses, the babies were accidentally switched. One was sent home to a life of comfort and opportunity. The other — the true son of a wealthy family — was taken home by a struggling couple, destined for hardship.

That boy would grow up to become a truck driver, never understanding why he looked nothing like his parents, or why neighbors whispered that something seemed “different” about him. His childhood home had no electrical appliances, no comfort — just hard work, poverty, and quiet confusion.

When his adoptive father died at the age of two, life became even harder. He took on part-time jobs as a teenager, fighting just to finish high school. All the while, he lived a life that should never have been his.

The truth might have remained buried forever if not for a dispute among the wealthy family’s younger sons. Decades later, they began to question their eldest brother — the one who had grown up in their home. After their mother’s death, he had demanded control of their father’s inheritance, promising to care for him in his final years. Instead, he sent their aging father to a nursing home.

Tensions rose. And in the midst of family quarrels, someone noticed something long overlooked — the eldest brother looked nothing like them. One brother remembered an old story their mother once told: how, after a nurse had taken the baby for a bath at the hospital, the clothes he was returned in were not the same.

Curiosity turned to suspicion. The younger brothers secretly collected a cigarette butt discarded by their elder brother and sent it for a DNA test. The results shattered everything they knew — he was not their biological sibling.

An investigation into hospital archives traced the switch to 1953. The brothers followed the trail — and found a humble lorry driver living in Tokyo.

He had been born just 13 minutes before their own brother, the one who had lived a life of comfort in his place. By then, his true parents were long gone — both had passed away before he ever knew who they were.

When the truth reached him, he was already 60 years old — a man who had spent his life in obscurity, never knowing he belonged to an affluent family of company executives and business owners. The man who had lived his life, meanwhile, was a company president educated at top schools and surrounded by privilege.

In November 2013, Tokyo District Court Judge Masatoshi Miyasaka ruled that the San-Ikukai Hospital was responsible for the tragic mix-up. He ordered the hospital to pay 38 million yen in damages, acknowledging that no amount could replace the decades lost.

“He was separated from his biological parents almost immediately after birth,” the judge said. “He will never meet them. He should have been raised in a financially comfortable environment.”

For the truck driver, the verdict was bittersweet — justice, but too late for the life he might have lived.

The story has recently resurfaced online as new cases of switched or abducted children emerge across Asia — including in China, where 27-year-old Xie Qingshuai was reunited with his multimillionaire father, who gifted him three fully furnished apartments to make up for the years apart.