Court Awards Wartime Captive’s Kin $161,300
The Japanese government must pay $161,300 to relatives of a Chinese forced laborer who fled his Imperial Army captors and lived more than 10 years in the wilderness, a court said in a landmark ruling.
The Tokyo District Court said the government should pay Liu Lianren’s relatives for forcing him to live and work under harsh conditions for almost 15 years, a court spokesman said.
Liu, who died last year at age 87, was abducted from China and sent to work on Japan’s Hokkaido island in 1944 during World War II. He escaped in 1945 and hid in remote mountains until February 1958. He didn’t know the war had ended.
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