Japan court rejects compensation claims in sex slave case

TOKYO -- In two landmark rulings, Japan's highest court yesterday rejected compensation claims filed by former wartime sex slaves and forced laborers from China, but acknowledged that the affected people 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 the Supreme Court 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.

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.

China's Foreign Ministry denounced the rulings, describing them as "illegal and invalid."

The ministry called the court's interpretation of the 1972 statement "arbitrary."

Shao Yicheng, 82, a plaintiff in one of the suits who was forced to work for the Japanese construction company Nishimatsu during the war, when he was 19, called the ruling "unjust."

"I didn't even get paid," he said at a news conference here. "I was just made to work. The least I want is to get my wages. I want justice."

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 end of World War II.

In its 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 Abe's recent denial of the practice.

Last month, 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.