Japanese Latin Americans’ Reparation Suit Voided

Hundreds of Japanese Latin Americans, offered $5,000 and an apology for being abducted to the United States during World War II, lost Tuesday in a lawsuit that sought to make sure the government had enough money to pay them.

U.S. District Judge Charles Legge dismissed the suit, which accused the Treasury Department of losing $200 million by failing to invest a $1.65-billion fund created by Congress to pay reparations to Japanese Americans.

A small fraction of the lost interest would have been enough to pay $5,000 to each of the 740 internees and descendants who had filed claims by an Aug. 10 deadline, said attorney Robin Toma.

Otherwise, he told reporters, many and perhaps all of them will go unpaid because remaining claims by Japanese Americans will use up most of the fund. About 82,000 Japanese Americans interned during the war have been paid $20,000 each under a 1988 law.

But Legge said it was premature to consider the issue of lost interest before a U.S. Court of Claims judge decides next month whether to give final approval to the settlement for Japanese Latin Americans. Even then, Legge said, he may not be able to order the government to replenish the reparations fund.

“It’s quite clear that Congress has underfunded what has turned out to be the necessary funds for reparations,” the judge said.

More than 2,200 Japanese Latin Americans, most of them from Peru, were forcibly brought to the United States during the war and held in internment camps.

The Latin Americans were not covered by the 1988 reparations law for Japanese Americans but sued in 1996 for equal treatment. A settlement offered an apology and $5,000 to surviving internees, and to the families of those who had died since August 1988.