News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Australian POWs Get Settlement

Date: April 24, 2001

"Payout for PoWs

By ANDREW PROBYN

AUSTRALIANS held captive in war by the Japanese will get about $25,000 compensation each from the Federal Government. The Herald Sun understands the Government will announce a $67.5 million deal for 2700 Australian survivors of Japanese PoW camps in the May 22 Budget.

It reflects similar compensation payouts announced in Canada and Britain last year and in New Zealand yesterday.

Veterans' Affairs Minister Bruce Scott received a submission for compensation from the Australian Ex-Prisoner of War Association earlier this year.

News of the compensation package was welcomed by association national president Ray Wheeler.

"If they do come through with this sort of money the majority of surviving PoWs will be very happy with a one-off settlement," Mr Wheeler said.

"It's not 50 years too late," he said.

"But there is still a worry about what happened after the war in terms of the 1951 peace treaty with Japan."

Mr Wheeler said that under the treaty, PoWs could not seek compensation from the Japanese Government.

When the association became aware it could not look to the Japanese Government, it, instead, started compensation claims against the Japanese corporations that used PoWs in their workforce.

Mitsubishi, Nippon Steel, Mitsui and many other Japanese companies all used Australian PoWs during the war.

Mr Wheeler, 77, spent two years and 11 months working on the Burma railway and on Saigon's docks before escaping from a Japanese "hell ship" on September 12, 1944.

"We were slave labour," he said. "The Japs were meant to dress and feed us, give us medical attention and pay us.

"I got paid 5c a day and it would take me 30 days to get enough for a duck egg, and they were usually rotten.

"It's too late for an apology, but we can still seek reparations from the companies who used us."

During talks over possible compensation, it was suggested that ex-PoWs be given payouts equivalent to total and permanent impairment pension.

"As I told the minister, 72 per cent of our members are already T&PI, so 28 per cent of them would have received (all the compensation)," Mr Wheeler said.

Mr Scott's spokesman said the Veterans' Affairs Department had invited the ex-PoW Association to make a submission on compensation last year.

"The Federal Government has received the submission and it is considering the issue of compensation," the spokesman said.

He would neither confirm nor deny that the announcement of the compensation package was imminent.

The New Zealand Government yesterday announced 150 Kiwi PoWs held by the Japanese in World War II would receive $24,200 in recognition of their suffering.

Civilian internees held by the Japanese will receive the same compensation.

"I'm sorry it's taken so long - it's time to pay up," Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday.

British ex-PoWs under the Japanese were last year awarded about $27,300 and Canadian PoWs were given $28,000."