[KS] Pursuit of WWII Redress Hits Japanese Boardrooms
icas
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Dear Friends:
The attached (converted to text) appeared recently on-line version of
the L.A. Times. The original can be seen by following the links from
http://www.latimes.com. Thank you.
Regards,
Sang Joo Kim
ICAS
http://www.dvol.com/~users/icas
---------------------------------
Pursuit of WWII Redress Hits Japanese Boardrooms
Courts: As lawsuits begin to mount, anxiety and resentment
grow in Tokyo over alleged victims' 'extortion.'
By SONNI EFRON, Times Staff Writer
TOKYO--Justice or extortion? The transpacific
perception gap is widening as stunned Japanese
corporations confront a tsunami of lawsuits filed in U.S.
courts by Allied prisoners of war and others who say they
were used as forced laborers during World War II.
And the hostilities over history are likely to bring
more bad blood in the coming months as some of the
attorneys who represented former slave laborers in Nazi
Germany in the historic $5.2-billion settlement reached
last month turn their legal guns on Japanese corporations
that allegedly profited from the crimes of the imperial
war machine.
Surprisingly few Japanese are aware of the growing
redress movement in the United States, where at least 14
lawsuits have been filed on behalf of victims and perhaps
two dozen more are expected soon. Two members of
parliament and several top international scholars recently
acknowledged that they were unaware of the issue.
But among those in the political establishment who
have followed the sparse Japanese media coverage of the
suits, there is growing anxiety and barely concealed
resentment.
Some see greedy U.S. lawyers plotting to mug
"deep-pocket" Japanese companies, which are vulnerable
because they do business in the United States, over a
reparations issue that Japan believes was settled by the
1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty.
Even if the companies prevail in court, as the
Japanese government insists they will, they face horrific
publicity and punitive legal fees.
"This is really a form of extortion," said a source
close to the Japanese government, which, like the
beleaguered corporations, has been tight-lipped about the
issue. Managers and employees of the blue-chip
corporations being sued who were born in the postwar
period--and often have never heard of any alleged abuses
committed by the wartime zaibatsu conglomerates--may well
view the lawsuits as a business opportunity for U.S.
litigators and defense attorneys, the source said.
Others here fear that the excavation in U.S. courts
and media of the ugliest chapter in Japanese history will
create a backlash here that could strengthen this nation's
ultraconservatives, increase suspicions of the U.S. Jews
who some perceive as masterminding the legal attack, and
potentially strain U.S.-Japanese relations.
"Anti-American sentiment will increase in a visible
way," predicted Takashi Inoguchi, a political scientist at
Tokyo University. Whatever the legal merits of the cases,
Inoguchi said the Japanese government will have difficulty
stonewalling the mounting pressure abroad by insisting
that all issues were settled by the U.S.-Japan peace
treaty.
Only Japanese peace activists have seemed to welcome
the U.S. initiatives as offering hope for the justice they
say this nation's pro-government courts have long denied
victims of atrocities.
Plaintiffs Face Uphill Battle
At two international conferences held in Tokyo and
Osaka last month, Japanese attorneys who have been waging
a mostly symbolic political and legal battle on behalf of
alleged victims of wartime atrocities swapped notes and
strategies with U.S. litigators who worked on the
Holocaust-linked suits against German corporations.
At least 46 war redress suits have been filed in
Japanese courts, most of them by Japanese attorneys
working pro bono in an attempt to promote reconciliation
between their nation and its Asian neighbors.
Plaintiffs include survivors of the 1937 Nanking
massacre; relatives of men who perished as human guinea
pigs in Japan's biological and chemical warfare programs;
former "comfort women" who worked as military sex slaves;
Chinese injured after the war by chemical weapons and
other ordnance left behind by the Japanese; and former
Allied POW and other alleged slave laborers.
Not one case has been won. According to attorney
Yoshitaka Takagi, three cases have been settled out of
court, including a forced labor case against steel giant
NKK Corp. In two cases, the courts ruled that the
plaintiffs had been wronged, though they declined to order
restitution, saying it is up to parliament to decide
whether and how to compensate victims.
Right-wing activists picketed the redress conference
in Tokyo, holding signs that read, "The Nanking Massacre
Never Happened," and calling on the U.S. to repent for the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nevertheless, a delegation of activists and human
rights lawyers from California that attended expressed
confidence that the Japanese government will soon be
forced by pressure on its corporations to seek a political
settlement with the victims.
Assemblyman Mike Honda (D-San Jose), author of a
successful resolution calling on Japan to apologize, said
Tokyo should consider the example of the 1988 U.S.
legislation compensating Japanese Americans who were
interned during the war.
"The issue is not whether Japan can, on technical
grounds, elude responsibility," Honda told the conference.
"The question is whether justice has been done."
Los Angeles attorney Barry A. Fisher said the legal
assault on Japanese corporations has only begun. Future
targets could include banks that financed wartime
activities, private companies whose employees procured or
made use of the sex slaves, insurance companies, and any
shipping firms that transported slave laborers.
"The Japanese were running no less than the biggest
slave shipping operation since the middle passage, the
African slave trade," Fisher said.
Some of the plaintiffs' attorneys recently launched a
Web site--http://www.japanesewwiiclaims .com--to provide
information to anyone who claims to be a victim of a
Japanese war crime.
The Japanese companies will probably claim they are
not the legal successors to the zaibatsu conglomerates,
some of which were disbanded by the American occupation
after World War II. But "these issues were faced in all
the Holocaust cases, and we were ready for them," Fisher
said. "There were private companies that were in league
with and benefited from the war effort, that made profits
from the use of forced labor, and they were unjustly
enriched."
"Who shipped the 'comfort women' to the front lines?
Of course they are accomplices," said Ignatius Y. Ding of
the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World
War II in Asia. The Northern California-based
organization, which seeks an apology and compensation from
Japan, alleges that 10 million Asians were used as forced
laborers during Japanese rule. Only 5,000 or so survivors
may still be alive, Ding said, but what is important is
that the perpetrators admit wrongdoing.
International human rights advocates and legal
scholars argue that responsibility for wartime atrocities
should not be subject to any statute of limitations and
that peace treaties between nations do not extinguish the
rights of individuals who were victims of war
crimes--whether committed by governments or their
corporate cronies.
This line of argument was used in the suits
concerning Nazi-era abuses by German corporations and
Swiss banks. However, the Japanese government and at least
one Japanese court have explicitly rejected it.
And so far, the government appears adamant that its
position is legally and morally justified.
According to a study by parliament, Japan has paid
more than $27 billion in war reparations to 27 countries.
After huge battles, Japanese textbooks now include brief
descriptions of its invasions and wartime atrocities. And
in 1995, then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued an
apology, expressing "deep remorse" for the "tremendous
damage" inflicted by Japanese "aggression." Critics note
that the parliament has refused to adopt a similar
apology.
In a recent interview, Foreign Ministry spokesman
Sadaaki Numata noted that under Article 16 of the San
Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan's overseas holdings were
liquidated by the International Committee of the Red Cross
and that the proceeds were used for reparations.
Britain distributed some of the money to former POWs.
But the U.S., which was then fighting the Korean War and
saw Japan as an Asian bulwark against communism, waived
payment of the reparation funds to American POWs.
The treaty states that the Allies "waive all
reparations claims . . . arising from any actions taken by
Japan and its nationals in the course of the prosecution
of the war."
Treaty Could Be Open to Interpretation
Numata said "Japan and its nationals" clearly
includes corporations. But a U.S. legal expert said that
is a matter of interpretation.
"It is impossible to give a definitive answer by
looking just at that language," said Whittier Law School
professor Michael J. Bazyler. He said the treaty and its
context will have to be interpreted by the courts, as were
four treaties that German companies cited during Holocaust
cases.
It is also not yet clear whether a new California law
extending until 2010 the statute of limitations for suits
by World War II forced labor victims will be ruled
constitutional, or whether New Jersey federal court
rulings in favor of the German companies will be upheld on
appeal, Bazyler said.
The Japanese right wing is outraged. One of its
leaders, Tokyo University professor Nobukatsu Fujioka,
warned in an opinion piece in the conservative Sankei
daily newspaper that, should the litigation continue,
Japanese victims of the atomic bombing or the firebombing
of Tokyo might attempt to countersue. "Sensible Americans
should consider how meaningless, foolish and dangerous it
is to create this kind of vicious circle which inflames
enmity between the two nations," Fujioka wrote.
The defendant companies have yet to articulate a
public relations strategy. Spokesmen for eight firms, in
brief telephone interviews, said little more than "no
comment."
Mitsubishi Corp. spokesman Yasuhito Hirota said the
company does not own coal mines where forced laborers
could have worked and that Mitsubishi was disbanded by
U.S. authorities after the war. The current Mitsubishi was
not founded until 1954, he said.
"I think there must be a misunderstanding," Hirota
said. "However, the lawsuits do exist, so we will respond
sincerely."
---
Times Tokyo Bureau researcher Chiaki Kitada
contributed to this report.
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