Washington — American POWs forced into slave labor in Japan during World War II must have the right to sue those companies, House members said Thursday as they introduced legislation targeted not at Japan but at the U.S. government.
"Our own State Department is the biggest obstacle to justice," impeding the POWs' lawsuits against Japanese companies that forced them to work while they were beaten, starved and denied medical care, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who co-authored the bill with Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif.
The department has said the 1951 peace treaty between the United States and Japan prohibits the lawsuits against the private companies many of them now household names in the United States, such as Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co., and Nippon Steel Corp.
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker accepted the State Department's interpretation of the treaty in September when he dismissed lawsuits brought by three dozen former POWs. The debt, he added, had been paid by "the immeasurable bounty of life for themselves and their posterity in a free society and in a more peaceful world."
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