Lawyers for a group of nine Chinese and Chinese-Americans filed a lawsuit on August 22 demanding compensation from 20 Japanese companies in the Mitsui and Mitsubishi groups, claiming they were forced to work as slave laborers for the firms during World War II.

The lawyers filed the class action lawsuit at the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Although more than 30 similar lawsuits have been filed in the United States since July last year, this is the first time Chinese citizens have been among the plaintiffs.

The lawyers had invited Chinese people forced to work for Mitsui and Mitsubishi during the war to participate in the lawsuit.

The group of nine plaintiffs consists of five Chinese citizens, one of whom is participating on behalf of a deceased family member, and four Chinese-Americans.

According to their lawyers, the five Chinese plaintiffs were forced to work at mines in Kumamoto Prefecture and other locations in Japan between 1943 and 1944, while the four Chinese-Americans, who were children at the time, had to work in mines and on bridge construction sites managed by Mitsui in China.

At a press conference in Los Angeles on August 22, Barry Fisher, one of the group's lawyers, said: "This is a suit on behalf of Chinese people victimized during the war. There were millions of them and hundreds of thousands are still surviving."

The lawyers said they also plan to file further class action suits on behalf of people from South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and the Philippines who were forced to work by Japanese companies during the war.

In addition to compensation for damages, the plaintiffs in the most recent case are demanding the companies pay them for the time they spent doing forced labor.

After the state of California passed a new law last July to prolong the statute of limitations on demands for wartime compensation until 2010, there has been a surge in the number of this type of lawsuit.

The law is not limited to US citizens. People living outside the United States and bereaved family members of victims also are entitled to file lawsuits seeking compensation. Former prisoners of war in the United States, Britain, Australia and the Netherlands have filed suits at courts in California since the law was passed.

Many of the lawsuits are being handled by a team of Jewish lawyers that secured a major out-of-court settlement last December in a forced labor case brought against the German government and several German companies. The German government and the companies agreed to pay 10 billion marks (540 billion yen) to create a fund to compensate victims of forced labor under the Nazis.

Lawsuits against the German government and German companies were first filed four years ago at US federal district courts. However, problems resulting from the statute of limitations and the limited jurisdiction of US courts led to deadlocks.

The US and German governments decided to intervene in the cases, resulting in out-of-court settlements such as the one reached in December.

The lawsuit involving the Chinese plaintiffs is being handled by the same team of lawyers.

The lawyers chose to file a class action suit so all Chinese forced to do unpaid work by the Mitsui and Mitsubishi groups from 1929 to 1945 could join it if they wished.

(People’s Daily)