A court Wednesday rejected demands from three Koreans that their employer pay them compensation and issue an apology for forcing them into slave labor during World War II.
The Toyama District Court acknowledged that Nachi-Fujikoshi Corp., a machinery maker, owed the plaintiffs their unpaid wartime salary but said the lawsuit was filed a month after the statute of limitations expired.Japan's wartime military government forcibly brought hundreds of thousands of young Koreans and Chinese to the country beginning in 1939 to make up for a domestic labor shortage.
Fujikoshi used more than 1,500 Korean forced laborers when it was producing cannons and gun parts for the Japanese army.
The conscripts were forced to work under harsh conditions in mines and private factories, and many died of malnutrition and from injuries inflicted by plant operators. The employers, many of them corporate giants today, have maintained that they only operated under government orders.