News-Info-Alerts

Re: Court Rejects Unit 731 Compensation Claims

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 28, 2002

" Tokyo acknowledges germ warfare
 
Court rejects compensation to Chinese relatives of victims  
Chinese plaintiffs hold portraits of war victims as they enter Tokyo District Court on Tuesday.  

TOKYO, Aug. 27 —  Tokyo on Tuesday acknowledged for the first time its use of biological warfare in China during World War II. But while a Japanese court recognized the crimes, it rejected calls by Chinese survivors for compensation.

       THE PLAINTIFFS — 180 Chinese people who said their relatives were killed in the germ warfare — had demanded that Japan pay them compensation of $83,430 each and apologize for the activities of biological warfare units such as the Imperial Army’s infamous Unit 731.

       The Tokyo District Court rejected the lawsuit for damages filed against the Japanese government, saying international law did not recognize the right of individuals to seek compensation from a state for damages suffered during war.
       However, the court acknowledged Japan’s germ warfare program existed and that court testimony from the Chinese victims was “reasonable” enough to believe. It was the first time a Japanese court had recognized Japan’s use of biological weapons before and during the war.

       “It’s positive that the court recognized the fact,” said Kohken Tsuchiya, who headed the Japanese legal team acting for the plaintiffs.

“However, it’s still a loss for the plaintiffs, so we would like to appeal.”

       The plaintiffs claimed at least 2,100 Chinese perished in outbreaks of cholera, dysentery, anthrax and typhoid that were allegedly mass-produced by Unit 731, which was based in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. The court has heard testimony from aging witnesses flown in from China.

Some Japanese veterans had testified they mass-produced cholera, dysentery, anthrax and typhoid at the unit’s base in Harbin in the early 1940s.

       The case has been closely followed in Japan because it has unearthed details about the country’s biological warfare program that the government and U.S occupation forces kept secret after the war.

       Some Japanese veterans had testified they mass-produced cholera, dysentery, anthrax and typhoid at the unit’s base in Harbin in the early 1940s.
       Japan has refused to confirm those accounts. After decades of denial, Tokyo acknowledged the existence of Unit 731 several years ago but has yet to disclose details of the unit’s activities.

       New details of Japan’s wartime germ project have emerged from recently declassified documents that were confiscated from Japan by the United States after the war. Hundreds of thousands of pages of documents relating to Unit 731 released over the past year have included such things as medical reports from human dissections and formulas for deadly bacteria.
       
BITTER OUTCOME        

The plaintiffs did not hide their bitterness.

       “My father died of plague, my elder brother died of plague. But it’s all over in a few minutes at the court. It’s unfair,” 71-year-old Chen Zhifa from Yiwu city in eastern Zhejiang province told reporters through an interpreter.
       “I was so disappointed and angry at the verdict,” said 62-year-old Xu Wanzhi, a plaintiff from central Hunan province.

       “Of course we are not going to accept a verdict like this.... We are ready for a prolonged fight,” he said, adding that his son and grandson would continue the fight if he died.

       The plaintiffs said there were eight outbreaks of plague or cholera in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces from 1940 to 1942, which they alleged was the result of germ warfare by Japanese forces.

       Germ warfare was already illegal under international law at the time.

       When asked about the court’s rejection of the lawsuit, Hideki Hama, director of the civil litigation division at the Justice Ministry, said: “We understand that the (Japanese) government’s legal assertion was recognized.”

       The Japanese government’s position as defendant in the case was that there was no legal basis for the plaintiffs to seek compensation from it, Hama said.

       Hama declined to comment on the court’s decision to recognize the fact that Japanese forces had waged germ warfare.

       The activities of Unit 731 were unknown to most Japanese citizens until 1981, when author Seiichi Morimura exposed its dark history in a book, “The Devil’s Gluttony.”
       
OWN UP TO THE PAST


After the ruling, a group of the plaintiffs along with Chinese and Japanese supporters demonstrated in the streets near the court, carrying banners that called on Japan to own up to its use of biological weapons during the war.

       Critics had said that if the court recognized Japan had indeed conducted germ warfare, it could pave the way for such an official admission.

       The suit is one of dozens that have been filed against the Japanese government or companies associated with Japanese aggression in the first half of the 20th century.

       Most have been rejected by Japanese courts.

       The Japanese government’s stance on war reparations is that they were settled once and for all in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty that formally ended the Pacific War and in subsequent bilateral treaties.

       Japan says all wartime compensation issues with China were settled by a joint statement signed in September 1972 that established diplomatic ties.
       
       The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report."