AP Features, April 27th, 2007
Japan's top court upheld a ruling Friday denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II, a court official and news reports said.
Supreme Court Justice Chiharu Saiguchi backed a Tokyo High Court ruling in rejecting the appeal, top court spokesman Toru Inuma said. He offered no other details.
In his ruling, Saiguchi said the women had no right to seek war compensation from Japan because of a 1972 agreement with China, according to Kyodo News Agency and public broadcaster NHK.
Saiguchi said the 1972 Japan-China Joint Communique, in which Beijing abandoned its right to claim war reparations from Japan, makes it impossible for Chinese individuals to seek wartime compensation from Japan, Kyodo and NHK said.
The plaintiffs, who filed their suit in 1996, had been seeking compensation from the government, Kyodo reported, without specifying the amount. One of the women died in 1999, and her family took over the suit, it said.
The sex slave ruling came just hours after the court scrapped appeals by five Chinese wartime forced laborers demanding compensation. The court ruled they have no right to seek reparation from Japan on the basis of the same 1972 agreement, officials said.
The plaintiffs had sought Nishimatsu Construction Co. to pay 27.5 million yen (US$230,300; euro169,390) in compensation for their suffering.
A Japanese high court ruling in 2004 ordered Nishimatsu to pay the money to the plaintiffs, but the company appealed the decision.
Friday's decision from Supreme Court chief justice Ryoji Nakagawa scrapped the Hiroshima High Court's decision and was expected to set a precedent for pending lawsuits by Chinese individuals seeking wartime compensation.
The court, however, acknowledged that the plaintiffs had to work under severe conditions that caused them illnesses and injuries and urged the construction company to voluntarily make unspecified amends.
The five plaintiffs _ three survivors and two family members representing men who have since died _ said they were brought over by Japan's military in July 1944 and forced to work for Nishimatsu as virtual slaves at a power plant construction site until the war ended a year later.
The men said they were barely fed and forced to work over 12 hours a day without pay or medical care.
Some 40,000 Chinese were taken to Japan in the early 1940s to work as slave laborers, mostly in coal mines and ports, including about 360 at Nishimatsu. Tens of thousands of others from Asian countries were also brought here as wartime slave laborers.
Japan's government also has faced dozens of pending lawsuits filed by other Asian victims of Japan's wartime atrocities, including former sex slaves, but maintained it settled all compensation issues in postwar treaties.
Some Japanese courts have in recent years acknowledged that the government and Japanese companies broke the law by using forced labor. But they rarely rule in favor of plaintiffs seeking compensation, often citing the expiration of the deadline for filing such claims, which is usually 20 years under Japanese law.
The courts also have said the current government is not responsible for crimes committed under the wartime constitution.
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Eds: Associated Press Writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report.
