50 years after WW II Asia sues ...

Our Asian correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports first on the legal ways in which Asians are still remembering injustices wrought by the Japanese in World War II, and then on the continuing Japanese failure to put the past well and truly behind them.

HONG KONG (JP): Visit the remoter northern parts of the Russian Far East and you may meet some sad and dejected Koreans. Their sadness stems from the fact that they should not be there in the first place, and they have spent a lifetime longing but unable to go home in the second.

The case of the Sakhalin Koreans was one of the sorriest and least known injustices to emerge from World War II, and to continue throughout the Cold War, with that injustice still is being perpetuated right down to today.

Between 1943 and 1945, some 43,000 South Koreans were taken by the Japanese to work as forced labor on the island of Sakhalin. After the war, the Japanese worried mainly about securing the return of their own people from what had become Soviet-held Sakhalin.

Many of the Sakhalin Koreans were forced to become North Koreans. Some acquired Soviet passports, while several thousand remained stateless, hoping for ultimate repatriation. Since few in the outside world knew about the Sakhalin Koreans, human rights organizations seldom, if ever, mentioned the case. The originators of the violation done to the Sakhalin Koreans -- the Japanese -- seldom brought pressure to bear on their behalf. Even the South Koreans did not do as much as they should have done to rectify the wrong done to their own people.

Since the end of the Cold War some Sakhalin Koreans have at last returned home. Many still remain in the land they were forced to adopt. But in August 1990, twenty Sakhalin Koreans sued the Japanese government for 100 million yen each. The suit claims compensation for the original act of wartime relocation, and also for the act of exclusion from Japan's postwar repatriation program.

The Sakhalin Koreans started quite a trend. While the Japanese prefer to forget about World War II, Asians are both remembering -- and belatedly suing for recompense.

One well-known case concerns a group of Hong Kong Chinese who are suing for 768 million yen, as compensation for the worthless currency they were forced to accept during the Japanese occupation. The Hong Kong residents continue to back up their legal case with occasional demonstrations, replete with huge bundles of the worthless money, and letters of protest formally delivered to the Japanese Consulate-General.

Overwhelmingly, the plaintiffs in most of the cases, only one of which has so far been resolved, are Koreans. But, according to a recent list of cases published by the Japan Times, there are also 46 Filipino "comfort women"" -- the euphemism for women forced into prostitution to serve the Japanese military -- who in two cases filed in 1993 are suing for 20 million yen each plus an apology.

Eight representatives of an organization in the Netherlands, representing former Dutch soldiers, civilians and comfort women, has sued for US$ 22,000 compensation, though whether this is for every one of the 76,041 members of that organization is not clear.

A coalition of former British, Australian and New Zealand prisoners-of-war is expected to sue later this year both for compensation and a sincere apology.

According to the Japan Times list, there are no less than eighteen (18) suits brought by Koreans. These range from suits against specific companies for forced labor during World War II, to Koreans suing for compensation because they were convicted for war crimes committed when they were conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army.

Several of the suits are brought on behalf of comfort women. One case seeks the court to declare illegal the treaties whereby Korea was first made a protectorate and then annexed by Japan.

A common denominator in many of the cases is the demand for an apology or an admission of responsibility by Japan. This fact only leaves one wondering how many of the cases would have been brought if the Japanese had been, like the Germans, much more frank and forthcoming about their war guilt during the last fifty years.

It is not clear whether any legal cases were brought and decided in the forty five years between the end of the war and the Sakhalin Koreans' suit being lodged in 1990.

Since many of the plaintiff's have waited so long before taking legal action, it is easy to understand why a common official Japanese reaction is to view the financial claims with a wary and skeptical eye.

So far, only one of the post-1990 suits has actually been concluded, but since this was an action brought by two Koreans claiming disability benefits for injuries received fighting for Japan, it does not necessarily serve as a precedent for the other cases.

Given the snail's pace at which the wheels of justice revolve in Japan, and it may be many years before most of these suits are settled. Meanwhile bitter memories continue to surface and to seek a legal solution.

From a distant part of Papua New Guinea, where the war once raged intensely, a suit threatens on behalf of 100 villagers said to have been massacred by Japanese forces.

It is also reported that the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation is thinking of bringing a legal case on behalf of former comfort women and forced laborers, seeking both compensation and an apology.

Window: It is reported that the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation is thinking of bringing a legal case on behalf of comfort women and forced laborers, seeking both compensation and an apology.