Forced labor victims ready to accept compensation
Print Edition
Chinese Victims and their families said yesterday they would accept an out-of-court settlement from a Japanese firm of 100,000 yuan (US$16,100) each for forced labor during World War II.
In a statement, their representatives said Mitsubishi Materials Corp had forced 3,765 Chinese to work in Japan, of whom 722 were tortured to death.
“We aren’t satisfied with Mitsubishi’s letter of apology and its offer of compensation, but considering the age of the survivors who hope to resolve the issue in their lifetime, we think it is acceptable,” the statement said.
At a press conference in Beijing, Wang Hongjie, whose grandfather died in a Japanese mine, said details would be published soon but the terms were as reported by Japan’s Kyodo news agency on July 24. Kyodo said then that Mitsubishi planned to pay each of the workers or their families 100,000 yuan. It also said that the firm planned to spend 6.25 million yuan on a memorial and 12.5 million yuan for an investigation into what happened to workers who are still unaccounted for.
An agreement will greatly promote Sino-Japanese relations, yesterday’s statement said.
During the war, nearly 40,000 Chinese were forcibly taken to Japan to work in factories and mines to fill a manpower shortage arising from Japan’s massive military mobilization. About 7,000 of them died during the period of their forced labor.
Dai Yunxiang, from Changli County in north China’s Hebei Province, was 26 when he was seized by Japanese soldiers in 1944.
He was sent to Fukuoka as a laborer in a Mitsubishi mine, China Youth Daily reported.
He told his son, Dai Bingxin, that workers weren’t allowed to leave the mine and wore thin clothing, sometimes made from sacks, during freezing weather. They worked barefoot for up to 13 hours a day and weren’t allowed to rest even when ill, the newspaper reported.
Their meals consisted of a couple of corn buns.
The legal path to justice began in 1995. Over the past 20 years, courts in Japan have rejected dozens of compensation claims. In 2007, the country’s supreme court issued a ruling saying that Chinese individuals couldn’t demand compensation.
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