Family members of pressured labor victims throughout Japan’s colonial interval arrive on the Supreme Court in Seoul, South Korea, December 21, 2023. /VCG
Japanese lawmakers have been reportedly getting ready to submit a invoice in early July to supply assist to surviving civilian victims of the Pacific War, a part of World War II, reviving debate over Japan’s unresolved postwar reparations points.
The proposed laws goals to assist individuals who suffered critical hurt from wartime air raids and different harm brought about through the warfare. According to Japan Today, it could mark the primary time in 38 years that such a invoice has been submitted to the Japanese parliament.
The transfer was prompted by the growing older of many surviving victims and got here at a time when little progress had been made on associated procedures throughout the ruling coalition, Japan Today reported.
Beyond compensation for its personal civilian victims, Japan’s wartime reparations to different Asian international locations additionally stay a topic of dispute. Although Japan reached settlements with 4 Southeast Asian international locations, these have been largely carried out by the framework of “economic cooperation,” successfully offering financial help fairly than direct compensation.
In December 2025, South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld a decrease court docket ruling ordering Nippon Steel Corp. of Japan to pay 100 million gained (round $67,900) in compensation to the household of Jeong Hyeong-pal, a wartime pressured labor sufferer. According to Yonhap News, Jeong was taken to Japan and compelled to work at a metal mill in Iwate Prefecture from 1940 to 1942.
The ruling marked the primary choice by South Korea’s prime court docket on such circumstances since its landmark 2018 ruling that Japanese firms might be held responsible for damages associated to wartime pressured labor.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi lodged a protest at a press convention on the identical day, describing the ruling as “deeply regrettable” and “absolutely unacceptable.”
The situation of particular person claims has additionally remained contentious in China. The 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement acknowledged that the Chinese authorities renounced its demand for warfare reparations from Japan. However, specialists have argued that the assertion didn’t represent a waiver of Chinese residents’ particular person rights to hunt compensation.
Jin Ming, a global regulation skilled on the Law School of Sichuan University, mentioned: “From a textual perspective, what the Chinese government waived was solely the state’s or the government’s right to seek reparations. It neither addressed nor waived the individual claims of Chinese citizens.”
He added that textual interpretation is the peculiar and first technique of treaty interpretation underneath worldwide regulation.
In Beijing, the China Federation of Civil Claims Against Japan, a civilian group, has spent greater than three a long time documenting the experiences of Chinese warfare survivors and searching for accountability from Japan.
Over the years, Chinese victims filed greater than 20 lawsuits in Japanese courts with assist from the federation and Japanese legal professionals, together with Keiichiro Ichinose. However, all main circumstances have been rejected, with Japanese courts typically citing authorized ideas reminiscent of “state immunity” or the alleged “waiver of individual claims.”
Chen Chunlong, president of the federation, mentioned that the Chinese authorities’s renunciation of state-to-state reparations didn’t imply that Chinese civilian victims had given up their proper to hunt compensation from Japan.
“That is why, for all these decades, we have continued to uphold this right,” Chen mentioned in an interview with CGTN.
Ichinose famous that Japan acknowledged within the 1972 joint assertion that it had deeply mirrored on the big harm inflicted on China through the warfare. However, he argued that Japan has failed to completely comply with by on that dedication, together with confronting its wartime aggression, addressing the problem in textbooks, and offering apologies and compensation to victims.
Zhang Lianhong, a professor at Nanjing Normal University, mentioned {that a} appropriate understanding of historical past is a prerequisite for Japan to resolve the unresolved points stemming from World War II.
“If Japanese society, particularly right-wing forces, continues to deny Japan’s wartime aggression and refuses to accept responsibility for the war, issues such as war reparations, the ‘comfort women’ issue, and abandoned chemical weapons will remain unresolved,” Zhang mentioned.
The Japanese authorities ought to interact in profound reflection on its wartime aggression and take the initiative to handle its tasks concerning unresolved wartime points, Zhang added.
Source: CGTN