Former POWs to sue Tokyo firms
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Your support makes all the difference.AFTER YEARS of being rebuffed by the Japanese government, a group of British former prisoners of war plan to sue some of Tokyo's biggest corporations over their suffering as slave labourers in the Second World War.
Early in the new year, 800 British men will bring a class-action suit against the former Nippon Mining Corporation, which ran the Kinkazan copper mine in Taiwan, according to Martyn Day, the lawyer acting on the men's behalf. The case will be filed in Los Angeles, where a change in state law allows courts to hear such cases.
Of the 523 Allied servicemen who went into the Kinkazan mine in December 1942, about 100 were alive at the war's end. The issue of compensation for POWs maltreated during the war has been an irritant in Japan's relations with its former enemies throughout the 1990s. Until recently the plaintiffs had little chance of success. The governments of Japan, Britain and the US agree that the issue was resolved in the 1951 San Francisco treaty, under which British POWs won pounds 75 in compensation. Lawyers are now concentrating on suits against Japanese companies, many of which used labourers captured by the Imperial Army.
In Germany, pressure on companies that exploited Jews and East Europeans has resulted in an offer of eight billion marks in settlement of outstanding claims, two-thirds of it from German corporations, the rest from the government.
"Our chances with Japanese courts are limited, but in the US and especially in California we have a much better chance of success," said Mr Day.
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