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An Unyielding Demand for Justice: Wartime Chinese Laborers Sue Japan for Compensation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Norimitsu Onishi
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In 1995, when Chinese victims of forced labor in wartime Japan began filing compensation lawsuits in Japanese courts, the elderly plaintiffs and their supporters were well aware that the legal path to justice would be neither fast nor smooth. Eleven years on, Chinese forced labor lawsuits against the Japanese state and private corporations have resulted in four court-ordered compensation awards. All are now under appeal, and there have been two court-mediated financial settlements. Even in decisions rejecting the Chinese claims due to statutes of limitations and state immunity, moreover, Japanese judges routinely rule that brutal forced labor in fact occurred. And some suggest that the government could pass legislation establishing a national compensation fund.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 11 , November 2006 , e19
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2006