Subject: [cwj 7] Six Koreans sue Mitsubishi of Japan over forced labor during World War II
From: Corporate Watch in Japanese <cwj@corpwatch.org>
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 12:23:29 -0700
Seq: 7
For more info on forced labor and Japanese corporations, see http://www.corpwatch.org/japan/domestic/#corphr Korea Herald May 2, 2000 Six Koreans sue Mitsubishi of Japan over forced labor during World War II A group of six Koreans lodged a lawsuit against Japanese giant Mitsubishi yesterday, seeking compensation for being used as forced laborers by the company during World War II. Calling themselves a "gathering of Mitsubishi draftees suffering from atomic bomb-related illnesses," the six former workers filed the lawsuit with the Pusan District Court. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and its liaison office in Pusan were named as defendants in the action. The plaintiffs, including 77-year-old Park Chang-hwan, were forced to do hard labor in Japan during the last years of Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule over Korea. They demanded in the suit that Mitsubishi pay a total of 606 million won in damages, 101 million won to each of them, for their forced labor and the Japanese firm's negligent attitude toward their health and safety. During the war, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. The plaintiffs claimed that Mitsubishi, which provided shelter and emergency rations for Japanese workers, exposed them to life-threatening conditions by not supplying Korean workers with any such relief. They said they still suffer the aftereffects of their mistreatment, including radiation-related illnesses. The civil suit represents the first postwar legal action filed against a Japanese firm in a Korean court. After losing a similar suit in a Japanese court last year, the six plaintiffs took the case to the Korean court on the advice of their Japanese lawyers. In 1995, 45 Koreans, including Park, sued the Japanese government and Mitsubishi for compensation for physical and mental damage from their forced labor. The Japanese court dismissed the case last year. Under the war-era Japanese constitution, the state was not legally responsible for damages done to individuals in the course of its activities, the court said. The Japanese court also ruled that the statute of limitations on the plaintiffs' claim had already expired. Earlier in the day, the Society of Bereaved Families of the Pacific War and the Lawyers for a Democratic Society held a news conference in Pusan to announce that they would join forces with international victims who launch suits against Japanese firms in American courts. The two civic groups are backers of the six plaintiffs in the Mitsubishi lawsuit. The groups also said they would wage campaigns to raise funds for the lawsuit and block Mitsubishi's domestic sales activities. In a related development, a group of U.S. lawyers representing Korean forced laborers said they would file suit with a U.S. court this week seeking compensation from Japanese firms for their clients. The lawyers said they represent some 30,000 Koreans and that the number could grow to as many as 750,000. In a press conference in Seoul last week, Michael Choi, one of the lawyers in the case and a partner at the Philadelphia-based law firm Choi and Associates, also called for the Japanese government to share responsibility for the forced labor. "The German government recently pledged to offer the same amount (of compensation) as German firms involved in the Holocaust, although it does not have any direct responsibility for victims abused by German firms," Choi said. Robert Swift, another lawyer in the case, dismissed Japan's claim that a treaty it signed with Korea in 1965 frees it of any liability. He said such treaties signed between governments have nothing to do with legal suits involving private firms and their victims. Updated: 05/02/2000 by Chang Jae-soon Staff reporter ______________________ The Corporate Watch in Japanese http://www.corpwatch.org/japan (CWJ) mailing list is a moderated email list in English designed to connect activists campaigning against Japanese corporations and investments around the world. * To unsubscribe from the CWJ mailing list, send an email to majordomo@jca.apc.org with text "unsubscribe cwj". To subscribe to the CWJ mailing list, send a message to majordomo@jca.apc.org with the text "subscribe cwj" * The CWJ mailing list is NOT intended for wide distribution. If you would like to post messages from this list somewhere else, we ask that you first contact us at cwj@corpwatch.org ______________________