News-Info-Alerts

Re: Former POWs Turned Away By Supreme Court

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: October 06, 2003

"High Court Rejects WWII POW Labor Case

By ANNE GEARAN
Associated Press Writer

October 6, 2003

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court turned aside appeals from former American prisoners of war and others who claim they were forced to work for private Japanese companies as slave laborers during World War II.

The court's action, taken without comment Monday, ends lawsuits in California against Japanese firms or their successors that allegedly forced prisoners to work in mines, dig roads and perform other duties more than 50 years ago.

Japanese conglomerates now known as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Nippon Steel and others survived the war in part by using slave labor, and then thrived in the postwar industrial boom, lawyers for former prisoners claimed.

"The perversity of the mistreatment of these men -- outside the laws, customs and conventions of war which all civilizes nations were and are now obligated to honor -- will always remain a dark shadow over the history of the 20th century," lawyers for former U.S. prisoner Lester I. Tenney told the court.

A federal appeals court dismissed the claims earlier this year. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said treaties signed by the United States barred prisoners from seeking restitution.

That ruling said federal power to make foreign policy overrode a 1999 state law in California that gave survivors and ex-POWs the power to sue.

Lawyers for the Japanese companies noted that the treaty ending the war in the Pacific specifically noted that Japan would be unable to pay reparations for all damage and suffering during the war. Under the treaty, Japan agreed to pay the allies about $4 billion in reparations.

Lawyers for the Japanese firms also said the lawsuits are effectively moot, because the Supreme Court has already struck down a similar California law meant to help Holocaust survivors recover insurance benefits.

Lawyers for aging veterans made an emotional appeal to the high court, which represented the last hope for resurrecting their claims.

"Having suffered unspeakable abuse in 1942-1945, the youngest of the survivors is nearly 80," the appeal said. "These men represent the finest of the generation that fought and won the Second World War, incurring enormous personal loss to preserve our way of life against severe and imminent threats."
The high court also rejected similar arguments from Filipino, Korean and Chinese nationals forced to work for Japanese companies during World War II.

The cases are Tenney v. Mitsui Co. Ltd., 02-1776; Saldajeno v. Ishihara Sangyo Kaisha Ltd., 02-1784; Oh v. Nippon Steel Co. Ltd. 02-1773; Ma v. Kajima Corp., 02-1778.


Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press "