Japanese Firms Sued Over WWII
Fifty-eight years after Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor, the battle to win compensation from Japan for alleged war crimes is escalating on both sides of the Pacific, with a volley of litigation and forums aimed at publicizing Japanese slave-labor practices and other wartime misdeeds.
The first multinational lawsuit against Japanese firms on behalf of plaintiffs from Asia, the South Pacific and Europe was filed in Los Angeles at 10:55 a.m. Tuesday, the precise moment in Los Angeles of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. Like most of the other 10 lawsuits against Japanese firms, the complaint was filed here to take advantage of a California law enacted earlier this year that extended the statute of limitations on World War II claims to 2010.
The suit was filed by lawyers who have been prominently involved in Holocaust-era claims against European firms. It is the first to target Japanese banks for profiteering in addition to the industrial firms such as Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi that have been focus of previous lawsuits. The suit also includes the Japanese government as a potential future defendant. In coming weeks, the legal team plans to file other lawsuits on behalf of American victims, Korean sex slaves and Chinese victims of medical experimentation.
Hideo Den, a liberal politician with the Social Democratic Party of Japan, predicted that Japan will no longer be able to ignore the mounting movement. “Japan is under an enormous amount of international pressure.” Den said.
Indeed, across the Pacific, two international forums on war crimes are convening this week in Tokyo and Osaka featuring scholars, attorneys, activists and politicians from Japan, elsewhere in Asia, the United States and Canada. The forums--one of which is co-sponsored by the Chinese government--are aimed at brainstorming strategies for winning wartime compensation.
In turn, those public discussions are prompting a brewing counterattack by Japanese conservatives. Tokyo University professor Nobukatsu Fujioka is organizing an emergency assembly this week to draw distinctions between Japanese war misdeeds and the Nazi Holocaust, while protests against the forums are also planned by a group calling itself the Committee of Concerned People Against Unreasonable Attacks on Japan and the Intent to Divide Japan and the United States.
The conservatives argue, like the Japanese government, that Japan settled all reparations claims in good faith after the war and that the United States and others waived all rights to future claims in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. Those seeking compensation assert that the treaty barred only new government-to-government claims, not individual suits for injuries.
“There are many people--mainly Americans, Chinese and Koreans--who have hateful feelings toward Japan since they used to be prisoners of war,” said Keiichiro Kobori, a Meisei University professor who heads the conservative committee. “What we fear is that . . . a growing number of Japanese intellectuals are now agreeing with these foreigners. Their movements are becoming bigger.”
Advocates for wartime victims are hoping that is so. “All of the international forces for justice are finally converging,” said Ignatius Ding, a leader with the Silicon Valley-based Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia.
Edward D. Fagan, the combative New York attorney who helped win a $1-billion settlement from Swiss banks for Holocaust survivors, said a goal of the suits is to bring so much public pressure on the Japanese that they will opt for a political settlement similar to one being brokered among European firms and the U.S. and German governments.
Following the same political strategy used in the Holocaust cases, Fagan said targeting Japanese banks would open the issue to scrutiny from such regulators as state controllers, banking committee members and other entities susceptible to public pressure.
On the other side, attorneys with the San Francisco law firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Everson, representing Mitsui, argue that the California law allowing war-era suits in state courts is unconstitutional because it interferes with the federal governments control over foreign relations.
The firm also argues that as far back as 1948, Allied officials sought a quick end to the reparations issue and stated that Japan had made extensive restitution.
Among the political allies the plaintiffs have enlisted so far in the cause is Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. He appeared in Los Angeles on Tuesday in support of a separate slave-labor lawsuit by Utah veterans and said he intended to use his committee post to hold hearings on the war crimes matter.
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Etsuko Kawase of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this story.
* SLAVE LABOR CHARGES
A U.S. Jewish group released a list of 255 companies it says used Nazi-era slave labor. A9
