News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Ex-POWs To Receive Compensation

Date: February 09, 2001

"Britain To Pay Ex-POWs in Japan

LONDON (AP) - Thousands of British servicemen held prisoner by the Japanese during World War II will begin receiving payments Thursday of $14,500 each, the government said.

Payments from the British government are part of a landmark plan announced in November that will ultimately cover up to 16,700 ex-prisoners or their widows. Government officials said payments would be sent immediately to 14,000 former prisoners of war or their spouses. There is no cutoff date for those eligible to submit a claim.

Successive British governments had resisted paying the ex-POWs compensation, not wanting to open the door to other such claims. But after decades of lobbying, the veterans successfully convinced government officials that they warranted an exception for the "unique circumstances of their captivity."

More than 12,400 of the 50,016 British service personnel reported captured by the Japanese perished.

During the war, Japan made slave laborers of Allied POWs in Asia, forcing them to work under hellish conditions in jungles, mines and shipyards. Beatings, starvation and executions were common.

At Japanese camps, the POW death rate was 27 percent, compared with a 4 percent rate in Allied camps.

When announcing the compensation payments last year, Prime Minister Tony Blair said the money was "for me and my generation and those younger, just one small but significant way in which we can say to you 'Thank you for your courage and thank you for what you did."'

Legal efforts by the ex-POWs to win compensation from Japan were unsuccessful. In 1998, a Tokyo court rejected their demands, saying all war compensation issues were settled by postwar treaties.

POW groups have repeatedly brushed aside Japanese apologies for their treatment."