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Japan Ordered to Pay Family of Forced Laborer Liu Lianren
The Japanese government must pay $161,300 to relatives of a Chinese forced laborer who fled his Imperial army captors and lived more than 10 years in the wilderness, a court said Thursday in a landmark ruling.
The Tokyo District Court said the Japanese government should pay Liu Lianren's relatives for forcing him to live and work under harsh conditions for almost 15 years, a court spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
The Japanese government, then under U.S. occupation, also ignored a U.S. order to help forced laborers return home after World War II, the court said. Not only did the government fail to provide protection and support for Liu, it also made no effort to pay compensation.
Liu, who died last year at age 87, was abducted from his home in China's Shangtong Province, which was occupied by the Japanese military at the time, and sent to work in a mine on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido in 1944.
He escaped in April 1945, four months before Japan's surrender, and went into hiding in remote mountains on Hokkaido until February 1958. He didn't know the war had ended.
Thursday's decision marked the first by a Japanese court to grant compensation to a Chinese victim of Japan's wartime labor force. It was all the more remarkable because it found the government at fault despite a law that such cases had to be filed within 20 years of the end of the war.
Presiding Judge Seiichiro Nishioka said Liu was forced into severe labor conditions and experienced "indescribable" difficulty while on the run, according to Kyodo News agency. The court refused to confirm the details of the report.
Liu, among the most vocal critics of Japan's wartime brutality, filed suit in March 1996. His relatives took it over after his death.
About 40,000 Chinese were shipped to Japan to work, mostly in mines and ports, between 1943 and 1945. Many, like Liu, were abducted from their homes.
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