Switched at birth, lorry driver gets $250K compensation after 60 years

Truth is stranger than fiction. And something similar happened to a Tokyo lorry driver, who learnt that he had been switched at birth, and he just won 38 million yen (US$250,000) in compensation.

The case, dating back to 2013, recently resurfaced online as people gawked at stories of Chinese children abducted young and reunited with their rich parents. However, this Tokyo tale is something else: Born in 1953, the driver spent six decades thinking he was ordinary — while his true family, dripping in affluence, had no idea what they had lost, as reported by South China Morning Post.

The truth only came out when his 'other family' started noticing a little… something off. After their mother died, the elder brother had been holding onto her inheritance, keeping the father locked in a nursing home, while the younger siblings began piecing things together. Clothes that mysteriously changed at the hospital, uncanny differences in appearance — it all pointed to one shocking conclusion.

Cue DNA tests in 2009. A cigarette butt thrown away by the elder brother finally revealed the switch: the lorry driver wasn’t related to them at all. Turns out, he was born just 13 minutes earlier than the baby he was swapped with. While the driver grew up in a home with no electricity and part-time work just to scrape by, the 'other' baby flourished — elite education, and was a company boss.

By the time the driver finally learned who his real parents were, both had passed away. Still, the courts recognised the injustice: Judge Masatoshi Miyasaka ruled that the driver deserved compensation for a life he never had the chance to live — raised in comfort, surrounded by privilege, instead of hardship and struggle.

It’s a tale of decades lost, poverty endured, and poetic justice finally served — a reminder that sometimes truth takes its sweet, dramatic time. And for context, it’s eerily similar to a viral Chinese story, where 27-year-old Xie Qingshuai discovered his multimillionaire dad and walked away with three furnished flats as a reunion gift.