Four former British POWs came to Japan Wednesday to file suit against the government, demanding $22,000 each for their suffering at the hands of the Japanese military in World War II.
They plan to file suit Thursday on behalf of 25,000 other veterans, said Martyn Day, a British lawyer for the group. Also filing suit will be fellow prisoners from the United States, New Zealand and Australia.Japan starved and beat POWs and forced them to work in wartime shipyards, mines and jungles in violation of international regulations. Some were executed.
Japan already faces lawsuits by victims of wartime atrocities, including Korean and Filipino women forced into sexual slavery and Chinese and Koreans brought to Japan as slave labor.
The Japanese government insists that all war compensation issues were settled by postwar treaties.
Although Britain accepts that Japan settled such claims in a 1951 treaty that re-established diplomatic relations, it supports paying the veterans as a goodwill gesture.
Japan tried to settle the issue by announcing a 10-year, $1 billion war atonement fund in August to pay for educational and welfare projects in East Asia.
Nearly 50 years after the war's end, Japan continues to grapple with its responsibility for World War II. Two Cabinet ministers resigned last year after defending Japan's wartime actions.
"We have a valid claim against the Japanese government," Day said, citing the 1907 Hague treaty, signed by Japan, that set guidelines for treatment of war prisoners.
"The Japanese breached that," Day said. "POWs suffered appalling treatment and slave labor."
The Tokyo government spends nearly $15 billion a year on its own war veterans and their families.