• Archives give up secrets of Japan's Unit 731 - " human guinea pigs"
  "This is direct evidence proving Unit 731 conducted biological experiments on live human beings." As well as Chinese victims, Russians, Mongolians, Koreans and some prisoners of war from the United States and Europe died in the camp. At least 5,000 people were tortured to death by Unit 731 and its predecessor from 1933 to 1945.

• Slave labour lawsuit rejected A court has thrown out a lawsuit by a group of Chinese who sought Y27.5 million ($414,000) in compensation from a Japanese company that allegedly used them as slave labourers in World War II.
• Chinese seek World War II germ warfare reparations

• Japanese WWII Veteran Admits Unit 731 Germ Tests
  SHANGHAI - A former Japanese officer has admitted he and his unit dissected live Chinese people and created deadly bacteria to harm enemies during World War II.

Disney vs. history - by Bill O'Reilly - (reader link)
This "Pearl Harbor" movie still bothers me. The truth is that the Japanese military was brutal during World War II, and, unlike the atrocities committed by the Third Reich, this fact has largely been avoided by the media. In addition to murdering hundreds of thousands of Chinese, the fatality rate for American POWs captured by the Japanese in World War II was a revolting 38 percent. By contrast only 1 percent of American POWs held by the German military died in captivity.
(picture at left from Asianguy.com "No, that's Pride")

• Reference: Japanese War Crimes Books on wartime atrocities
  committed by the Japanese forces - the frightful legacy of Bushido and militarism

• Reparations: Former South Korean veterans reportedly sue Japan
  TOKYO - According to media reports Saturday, a group of South Koreans have filed suit against Japan, demanding compensation for Koreans who served in Japan's army during World War II and for the return of remains buried at a war shrine in Tokyo.

• Memorial honors Japanese-American veterans, internees
  WASHINGTON (AP) More than 800 Japanese Americans fought against their ancestors' homeland and died for their adopted country in World War II. Another 120,000, mostly from California, were confined in internment camps.

• Australia: 55 years on, POWs set to get comp After a wait of more than 55 years, surviving Australian soldiers imprisoned in Japan's notorious POW camps during World War II look set to receive financial compensation in tomorrow's federal Budget.

FEATURE-Ex-GIs enslaved in Japan push for reparations
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Imagine you were a slave during the Second World War, forced to work for a company and a country bent on destroying people like you. You starved and got sick and many of your fellow captives died.

How The Japanese Used American POWs For Slave Labor

Japanese intelligence in World War II (birdman)
At home, the hate-filled wartime caricature of the Japanese enemy disappeared almost overnight.
Naval Intelligence intercepts proved with no doubt whatever that, during the war, the Japanese had an extremely effective espionage network in the U.S. and that the U.S. government had in its possession names and identification of innumerable active Japanese agents.
So as not to stir up race riots or any such disturbances, the U.S. has never released the names of the extraordinarily numerous Japanese agents in the U.S. The American public consequently remains, to this day, ignorant of the massive wartime Japanese intelligence operation in the United States.

• Tokyo court rejects World War II sex slaves' bid for compensation
• Japan court rejects former Korea sex slave's suit TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Japan's high court on Thursday rejected a Korean woman's demands for compensation and an apology from the government for forcing her into sexual slavery during World War II.
• Japanese firm to pay for wartime brutality
• Japan war slaves get $4.6m A Japanese construction firm has agreed to compensate nearly 1,000 Chinese labourers forced to work as slaves in a mine during World War Two. While not admitting any responsibility, Kajima Corporation said it would give $4.6m to the Chinese Red Cross to set up a fund for survivors and the families of those who died.

Cast Light on Japan's War Crimes The U.S. government has never been eager to fully document and expose the atrocities committed by Japan against Americans and other captives during World War II. On the contrary, it has sometimes made sure that information about Japan's extensive war crimes would stay hidden. In the early 1950s the United States even returned to Japan a vast intelligence trove seized by American forces at war's end, effectively assuring that this information, much of it incriminating, would not become public. Nazi Germany's crimes have been abundantly and in many cases precisely documented. Much has yet to be revealed about Imperial Japan's heinous wartime behavior.

Now Congress has acted to change that--maybe. It has passed legislation, sponsored in the Senate by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), to create a new task force that would be charged with getting access to classified U.S. intelligence files on Japan's wartime abuse of Allied prisoners and other crimes. A similar group, looking at what U.S. agencies knew about German atrocities, has been at work for several years. But doubt has already been cast on how effective the projected search for Japanese data in U.S. files will be.

At some point in the legislative process language was changed to deny the war crimes committee power to override the 1947 National Security Act. That law allows the CIA director to keep secret any materials he believes could reveal damaging information about intelligence operations. It's easy to see how that broad authority can be misused, especially when international political considerations come into play, as they clearly have with Japan.

Historians have long noted that Washington's Cold War worries over assuring that Japan remained a cooperative ally were an incentive to downplaying or keeping secret what was known about Japanese atrocities, from its invasion of China in 1937 to Tokyo's defeat in 1945.

Scholars number the victims of Japanese war crimes in the millions, most of them Asians but many Western military and civilian captives as well. All of them--the slave laborers, those subjected to hideous biological experiments, those routinely starved and brutalized in POW camps--deserve to have the truth revealed. The war ended 55 years ago. It's time to end the immoral U.S. policy of cover-up and secrecy about Japan's wartime atrocities.

UK: Britain to pay reparations for Jap POWs
Thousands of former Japanese prisoners of war are in line for extra compensation after Tony Blair gave his strongest hint yet that the Government would agree to a new pay-out. The Prime Minister told MPs yesterday that he had "a good deal of sympathy" for the cause of those 7,000 former servicemen who had suffered in the Far East during the Second World War. (so British Taxpayers are forced to pay for Japanese atrocities
- this is another atrocity - ed.)
"The suffering that they endured was appalling. The nation owes them a particular debt of honour for the sacrifice they've made and the memories they have had to live with... for the rest of their lives." Mr Winnick called for compensation so that Britain could honour its obligations to "what is now a very small number of people who suffered so terribly as prisoners of war of the Japanese, treated as work slaves, tortured". He added: "Surely it is not too much to ask that at long last we honour our obligations and do what is right?"
Ref: NNN: American Prisoners of War Sue Japanese Firms for War Crimes

• Chinese Wartime Laborers Sue Japan Government
• Japanese Lawyer Seeks Justice for Chinese Victims of WWII Aggression
• Japan says US has no jurisdiction in WWII Chinese slave labour suit
• POWs launch case against Japanese companies A group of elderly Chinese men who allege they were used as slave labourers during World War II have launched a test case seeking compensation from two Japanese companies.
  
  
• PoWs fight Japan firms in US courts A group of Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals have launched a test case in the US seeking compensation from two Japanese companies for alleged human rights abuses before and during World War II.
  
  
• Pows Argue Japan War Claims in SF Federal Courtroom
  U.S. Department of Justice Attorney David Anderson supported the Jap position.
  
  
• "Book Reveals Hirohito the Militarist" (Japanese War Crimes)
  about Herbert Bix's biography of Hirohito, magnifies the need for answers to long-time questions asked by ex-prisoners of war of the Japanese.
  We have known that the answers lie hidden in the secret records of Japan and the U.S. Or worse, were destroyed by Japan.
  Who in Japan ordered the inhumane, uncivilized treatment of the captured prisoners of war? Who ordered the transport of POWs to Japan for use as slave laborers of their industrial complex?
  Who ordered the POWs transported in unmarked "hell ships" traversing oceans controlled by Allied submarines, thus condemning to death thousands of Allied POWs who had already suffered years of unbearable atrocities?
  Who in Japan ordered an immediate massacre of all POWs enslaved in Japan, upon news that the homeland invasion by the Allied forces had begun?
  The answers to these and to related questions lie with the very top military planners, and now we know that Emperor Hirohito knew of these orders and undoubtedly approved. In light of these new revelations, ex-POWs' slave-labor lawsuits against Japanese corporations for compensation and apologies take on a new dimension of credence.
  (I am an ex-POW and was a slave laborer in the Mitsubishi copper mine in Hanawa, Japan.) JAMES T. MURPHY Santa Maria

• Canadian prisoners of war of the Japanese
  The Japanese held all prisoners of war in complete contempt, and the Canadians became convinced that they would all be executed sooner or later. The lack of food, medicine and proper clothing compounded the suffering of captivity.
  Conditions in the Japanese camps were severe, and disease, cold and despair claimed many victims. Survival was a daily struggle.
  The Japanese guards visited various forms of physical punishment and abuse on all of their prisoners, and many Canadians were particularly offended by the Japanese practice of slapping their captives' faces.
  (from Ukrainian Canadian soldiers and the battle for Hong Kong)
  
  
• Filipinos Sue Japanese Companies Over WWII Forced Labor

* No Reparations for U.S. War Slaves More than a half century later, Bataan survivors are fighting Japan again. But in this battle, the Japanese have an unlikely ally: the U.S. government.
It was called the Bataan Death March: Americans who surrendered to the Japanese when the Philippines fell were beaten and killed by their guards for just trying to get a drink of water.
"We lost almost 16,000 American kids in that one camp in the first 40 days of its existence," says Richard Gordon. (NewsMax)

* UK: Japanese PoWs ready to settle for £10,000 each Several thousand former soldiers and their widows could drop court action against Japan if Britain agrees to pay them

* U.S. Stance on Reparations by Japan Angers Ex-POWs WWII: Government backs Japanese contention that full compensation was made for mistreatment. A Senate panel will consider the matter. California veterans Ray Heimbuch and James T. Murphy endured beatings, near-starvation and forced labor as prisoners of war of Imperial Japan during World War II.
After they were released, they say, the only money they ever received was what they were told was ration money owed them at a rate of $1 for each day of imprisonment. Now the men--and other former POWs nationwide--say they are stunned and disappointed that their own government has officially backed Japan's contention that it fully compensated them for wartime misdeeds. They have launched a national protest against the government position, prompting a hearing today before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

EaglesUp: U.S. Envoy Rejects POWs' Lawsuits Against Japan

 * US Lawyer Sues Japanese Firms for POWs

 * Japanese Firms Taken Aback by POW Suit.
"We believe there must be some misunderstandings and we would like to clarify these points," said a spokesman for major trading house Mitsubishi Corp.

 * The Bataan Death March

 * Japanese War Criminals Watch List   

 * Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War

 * Welcome to The Comfort Women Website
 
 * Teacher helps Japanese-Americans, aliens win reparations: Fumie Ishii Shimada is convinced more could qualify 

 * Congress to Consider Japanese War Crimes
   [warning - graphic]

 * 105th Congress - House Concurrent Resolution 126 [Jap War Crimes]
Whereas 33,587 members of the United States Armed Forces and 13,966 United States civilians were captured by the Japanese military in the Pacific Theater during World War II, confined in brutal prison camps, and subjected to severe shortages of food, medicine, and other basic necessities;

Whereas many of the United States military and civilian prisoners of the Japanese military during World War II were subjected to forced labor, starved and beaten to death, or summarily executed by beheading, firing squads, or immolation; 

Whereas, of the United States prisoners held by the German military during World War II, 1.1 percent of the military prisoners and 3.5 percent of the civilian prisoners died during their imprisonment, but of the United States prisoners held by the Japanese military, 37.3 percent of the military prisoners and 11 percent of the civilian prisoners died during their imprisonment; (more...

 * In 1937, Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. gunboat Panay on China's Yangtze River.
    Japan apologized, and paid $2.2 million dollars in reparations.