Submitted by admin on Sun, 2007-04-29 08:00. ::
Shao Yicheng, 82, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits ruled on Friday, was forced to work without pay for a Japanese construction company during World War II. At a news conference, he called the decision unjust.
TOKYO, April 27 — In two landmark rulings, Japan 's highest court on Friday rejected compensation claims filed by former wartime sex slaves and forced laborers from China but acknowledged that they had been coerced by the Japanese military or industry.
The decisions were handed down as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tried to head off a resolution on Japan's wartime sex slavery in the House of Representatives during a two-day visit to Washington.
It was the first time that the Supreme Court has ruled on lawsuits by Japan's mostly Chinese and Korean captives during World War II, effectively quashing dozens of similar cases that have been working their way through the lower courts in recent years.
The court said in both cases that the Chinese plaintiffs had lost their rights to seek individual legal claims against the Japanese government and companies because of a 1972 joint statement in which Beijing renounced war reparations from Japan, a decision supporting the government's position that postwar agreements cleared Japan of responsibility for future individual claims.
But in a striking rebuke to nationalist politicians who have tried to play down Japan's wartime crimes, the court acknowledged the historical facts of sex slavery and forced labor, two practices that continue to fuel anger in Asia six decades after the war's end.
In its 16-page ruling in a sex slavery case, the court acknowledged that Japanese soldiers had abducted two teenage Chinese girls and forced them to work as sex slaves for months, contradicting Mr. Abe's recent denial of the practice.
Last month, Mr. Abe said there was no evidence that the military had directly forced women into sex slavery, a position that was put into a written statement and endorsed by the cabinet as the government's official position on March 16.
Historians have estimated that 50,000 to 200,000 women from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were taken as sex slaves by the Japanese military during the war.
“Regarding the extremely hard situation they were placed in, I am filled with a sense of apology,” Mr. Abe said Thursday in a meeting with leaders of the House of Representatives. And in a press conference with President Bush at Camp David on Friday, he said that he had “deep-hearted sympathies” for the women and that he was sorry that they had been “placed in extreme hardships and had to suffer that sacrifice,” The Associated Press reported.
In both statements, Mr. Abe avoided assigning responsibility for the practice and did not retract his denial of the military's direct role in it, a crucial point to his nationalist supporters, who argue that the women were prostitutes or forced into brothels by private brokers.
In the sex slavery ruling, the court acknowledged that Japanese soldiers abducted the two plaintiffs, who were 13 and 15 at the time, in Shanxi Province, China, in 1942.
According to the court, Japanese soldiers took the 15-year-old from her older sister's house to a Japanese military base. There, the girl — a virgin who had yet to have her first period — was raped repeatedly by soldiers, including the commanding officer, the court said. Her family obtained her release after two weeks, but soldiers kidnapped her again, confining her and raping her repeatedly, the court said.
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