Lawsuits Seeking Redress From Japan

Re “Japan’s War Victims in New Battle,” Aug. 16: Finding and understanding the truth is the most one can hope for when attempting to come to grips with horrors such as wartime atrocities, and Japan has an obligation to the world to help uncover the complete truth. Nothing can erase the memories burned into those who suffered through atrocity, regardless of how many dollars are calculated or how many times one can use the word “closure” in the argument. Truthful disclosure is the first critical step to avoid repeating such horrors.

However, if we are to start using litigation and money to absolve responsibility for atrocity, then Americans must be prepared to dig deep down into their own pocketbooks to “compensate” the thousands of elderly, women and children massacred in Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Or does an X in the win column let us determine the definition of what an atrocity is?

MARK JOSLIN

Valencia

*

I was heartened to read about the lawsuit filed by Lester Tenney to receive compensation for the time he spent as a forced laborer at a mine run by Mitsui during World War II (Aug. 12). As a Jew, I am more familiar with the horrible deeds of the Nazis than those of wartime Japan during the 1930s-40s, yet I am constantly amazed at the lack of compensation and recognition afforded the victims of Japan’s atrocities compared to victims of the Nazis. German companies and more recently Swiss banks have admitted their complicity in the horrors wrought by Nazi Germany.

When the story of the “comfort women” broke in the early ‘90s, the Japanese government first labeled the women, who as adolescents and young women were held in shockingly brutal sex slave camps, as liars and then prostitutes. Today Japan’s government continues to drag out the case. Hopefully Tenney’s lawsuit and any others that may be brought will show we remember the victims not only of the horrors committed across the Atlantic but across the Pacific as well.

STEFFEN TUROFF

Los Angeles