News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Slave Laborers Receive Compensation

Date: December 01, 2000

"War's forced labourers get hope from $8m payout
Michael Millett, Herald Correspondent in Tokyo

Soldiers and civilians forced into wartime labour for Japanese companies have vowed to use a landmark 500 million yen ($8.6million) payout for Chinese victims to back further compensation claims totalling millions of dollars.

But legal experts have warned the long list of remaining plaintiffs they still face huge problems using the local judicial system to extract justice for their treatment during World War II.

The targeted companies, including some of Japan's biggest corporate names such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui, have, with government support, consistently refused to accept responsibility for slave labour claims and yesterday were maintaining that this week's case did not set a legal or moral precedent.

On Wednesday, Kajima Corp, one of Japan's biggest construction companies, agreed an out-of-court settlement with Chinese plaintiffs for a surprisingly large 500 million yen.

It will be used to set up a fund, administered by the Chinese Red Cross, to help survivors and families of 986 labourers forced to work in the company's Hanaoka mine, in northern Japan, which was notorious for harsh treatment of its workers.

In the dying days of the Pacific War in 1945, the Chinese rioted over rations, killing five Japanese overseers. The rebellion, dubbed the Hanaoka uprising, was crushed, with more than 100 tortured and killed in reprisal.

The final death toll was 418 - virtually half the workforce.

The settlement, made at the urging of the Tokyo High Court, is not the first involving slave labourers. At least three court settlements have been made for Korean victims.

But this is the first involving Chinese and the first to be resolved with a group payout, rather than the distribution of sums to individual plaintiffs.

Lawyers representing the Chinese said the company's backdown could have ramifications for more than 60 other compensation claims jammed before the Japanese courts.

But success appears to rest more on the ability of plaintiffs to apply political or moral leverage than any legal strategies.

Kajima insisted the settlement did not involve any official acknowledgment of liability and the Government's formal policy is that all compensation claims were settled by the San Francisco Treaty of 1951.

The size of the settlement - almost 10 times that sought by the plaintiffs - suggests it may be tied to diplomatic efforts to improve relations with China.

A former forced labourer and executive director of the US-based Centre for Internee Rights, Gilbert Hair, said the settlement was a "welcome" one, given the looming case involving US, British, Dutch, Australian and New Zealand victims.

That case will be heard in Tokyo on December 18.

Prisoner-of-war groups are using controversial Californian legislation to push compensation claims, with 26 cases filed so far in the US against 31 Japanese companies.'