Some Vets Slip Through Cracks of Japan’s Compensation Plan

He was drafted as a Japanese citizen, convicted as a Japanese war criminal, served five years in an Allied prison, and was shipped to Japan against his will after World War II.

But when he landed in Japan in 1951, former Pvt. Shigematsu Kan discovered that he was no longer a Japanese citizen, and so he was not entitled to veterans benefits--not even military back wages or boat fare home to his native Taiwan.

Nearly 55 years after Japan’s surrender, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, is hurriedly preparing to compensate some of the Koreans and Taiwanese who were forced to serve in the Imperial Army but were denied benefits because their colonial-era Japanese citizenship had been revoked.

The LDP plan would give about $38,000 to each disabled veteran and $24,500 to the families of conscripts who have died. It applies only to residents of Japan.

However, the 75-year-old Kan would not receive so much as a yen for his eight years as a prison camp guard for the Japanese and then as an Allied prisoner.

The onetime tailor and Tokyo taxi driver, who goes here by the name Kan but whose real name is Chien Mao Sung, is eking out a living on a company pension of $9,400 annually.

Though he lost his freedom and his homeland--and claims that he was severely beaten and used as a slave laborer by his Australian captors--Kan was never wounded. The LDP proposal would not compensate able-bodied foreign veterans.

The plan comes amid mounting pressure on Japan from a spate of lawsuits filed in the United States, Australia and the Philippines by alleged victims of war crimes.

Lawmaker Kazuo Torashima, who chaired the LDP’s committee on compensation for the non-Japanese veterans, said that the two issues are not connected and that the U.S. lawsuits were not discussed during the party’s deliberations.

Torashima said the LDP leaders want to fulfill Japan’s “moral responsibility” to its non-Japanese veterans and settle the issue this year.

The LDP’s move is in part the result of 13 lawsuits that have been filed in Japanese courts since 1975 by Koreans and Taiwanese. The plaintiffs claimed that it was discriminatory and unconstitutional to deny non-Japanese veterans who live in Japan the same generous military pensions that their Japanese fellow-soldiers had been collecting for decades. Not one of the suits has succeeded, though some are still being appealed.

The government’s position was and remains that it has already settled all its legal obligations to foreign veterans. Japan paid compensation to South Korea under a 1965 peace treaty that covered veterans, and in 1988 it agreed with Taiwan to pay about $16,000 each to seriously injured veterans or to the heirs of those who were killed.

However, foreign veterans living in Japan were not covered by either agreement.

In 1988, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that the denial of military pensions to noncitizens was not unconstitutional but recommended that parliament pass legislation to compensate the veterans.

The Japanese Bar Assn. also has called on the government to correct what it considers a discriminatory policy.

However, it is the increasing international pressure on Japan to take further steps to settle outstanding war claims that has probably helped spur senior LDP leaders to action, said Yoshitaka Takagi, a spokesman for the group of attorneys representing the non-Japanese.

The government’s offer probably won’t be enough to stop the lawsuits, Takagi said. In addition to not covering able-bodied veterans, the plan would provide the disabled with only a one-time, lump sum payment, while Japanese veterans have received monthly pensions that could be worth 15 to 20 times more over a lifetime.

Moreover, the non-Japanese want an apology for what they see as racial discrimination. The LDP draft expresses “humanitarian condolences” but does not say Japan is sorry.

Kan, however, hasn’t even bothered to file a lawsuit.

“If the judge were Swiss or from some other neutral country, I’d be delighted to sue,” he said. “But if the judge is Japanese, it would be unfair from the start.”

Instead, he has told his life story to writer Koichi Hamazaki, whose book, “I Was a Japanese Soldier,” was published in Japanese last month.

In a memoir rich in historical detail, Kan described his stint in the Japanese army, during which “beatings were a daily way of life,” and his tenure as a prison guard in Kuching, Borneo, where Australian civilians as well as Allied military personnel were held.

About 40% of the Australians who went into Japanese prison camps never came out.

But Kan claimed that he was kind to starving prisoners at his camp, allowing them to collect snails for protein--which fellow guards would not allow--and giving candy to the interned children. Kan said he also risked imprisonment to sneak eggs to an Australian mother who begged him for food for her ailing baby. The infant survived, he said, but he is unable to prove his story.

Kan’s downfall began one day when a senior Japanese officer saw a British lieutenant stroll by the gate where Kan stood guard without saluting. Incensed, the Japanese ordered Kan to beat the lieutenant, then ordered him to beat the man harder.

When the Australian troops arrived at the camp after Japan’s surrender, it was the British lieutenant who decided which of the Japanese soldiers would be tried for war crimes, Kan said. The Briton fingered him.

The Australian soldiers beat their former tormentors with rubber hoses, studded boxing gloves and batons until “the floor was a sea of blood,” Kan said. A spokesman for the Australian Embassy in Tokyo said it was impossible to comment on Kan’s allegations so many years later.

Though the LDP plan is bound to disappoint many of the veterans, lawmaker Torashima said the government hopes its goodwill gesture will be accepted. He estimated that perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 Koreans living in Japan could qualify for the compensation payment, and an untold number of Taiwanese.

The LDP plan must still be negotiated with the opposition--which wants to be more generous--but some form of the legislation is expected to pass this spring, and the government wants to start making payments this year.